of the stone is divided into two panels—an upper and a lower.
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Each panel is filled by a herd of galloping horses—seventeen in one group and eighteen in the other. In both panels the horse at each end is completely traced. Those in between are represented by contour lines of the heads, necks and forefeet only, giving the effect of an orderly compact squadron of cavalry in action. The original is said to have disappeared but Cartailhac[1] has reproduced it in negative from an estampage.
From the beginning of the Magdalenian epoch, symbolism began to play an important role in paleolithic art. According to Piette, symbols are figures or images employed as signs of objects; therefore they represent words. In the process of time the words were divided into syllables, the syllables into letters; the same signs have designated successively words, syllables, and letters. Among the earliest paleolithic symbols are the dotted circle, the lozenge and the spiral or sigmoid scroll. The first is supposed to be a sun symbol. It reappears as an Egyptian hieroglyph, also on dolmens and menhirs, on bronze age funerary urns and ornaments of the first iron age. The circle without the dot passed into the ancient alphabets and from them into modern alphabets. The lozenge was employed as an artist's signature. The spiral has flourished in all succeeding ages and like some other Symbols may have developed independently in various ages and lands.
Piette distinguishes two successive systems of writing in the Magdalenian—the first hieroglyphic and the second cursive. He believes the latter was derived from the former, but admits that since symbols are creatures of convention they may have been from the beginning figures formed by geometric lines instead of being simplified images. An example of cursive writing dating from the Magdalenian epoch is given in figure 17. It is from the classic station of La
- ↑ L'anthropologie, vol. 14, 177, 1903.
