Anthropology and the classics : six lectures delivered before the University of Oxford . at follow may be more opento doubt. It is worth noting that a curious parallelto these very ancient examples of the degenerationof the oxs head is to be found among the Cretanand Cypriote signs of the Minoan and MycenaeanAge. 1 Exemples de figures degenerees et stylisees a lepoque duRenne. (Congres International a*Anthropologic et <TArcheologieprehistoriques, 1906. Compte Rendu, t. i, pp. 394 seqq.) PRIMITIVE PICTOGRAPHY 13 But the course followed by evolution of figuredrepresentations during the Reinde
Anthropology and the classics : six lectures delivered before the University of Oxford . at follow may be more opento doubt. It is worth noting that a curious parallelto these very ancient examples of the degenerationof the oxs head is to be found among the Cretanand Cypriote signs of the Minoan and MycenaeanAge. 1 Exemples de figures degenerees et stylisees a lepoque duRenne. (Congres International a*Anthropologic et <TArcheologieprehistoriques, 1906. Compte Rendu, t. i, pp. 394 seqq.) PRIMITIVE PICTOGRAPHY 13 But the course followed by evolution of figuredrepresentations during the Reindeer Period leads toanother result, which also has parallels in the historyof later art, but which does not seem to be so gener-ally recognized. The degeneration, illustrated byFig. 2, of more or less complete figures into merelinear reminiscences, is very familiar to us. It is wellillustrated, for instance, in the relation of the demoticand hieratic Egyptian signs to the what is sometimes forgotten is that the simplelinear forms are sometimes the older, and that, even. Fig. 2. as, I think, can be shown in the case of some ofthe Egyptian hieroglyphs, the linearization of thepictorial form was merely a going back to what hadreally been the original form of the figure. I havealso been struck with the same phenomenon in tracingthe genesis of some of the hieroglyphic characters ofMinoan Crete. We have only to look at the rudeattempts of children to depict objects to see thatsimple linear forms of what may perhaps be calledthe slate pencil style precedes the more elaborate 14 THE EUROPEAN DIFFUSION OF lect. stage of drawing. Art begins with skeletons, andit is only a gradual proficiency that clothes themwith flesh and blood. So it seems to have been with the Reindeer has already been noticed that the stratigraphyof the paintings and engravings on the Cairoan walls,as investigated by the Abbe Breuil, shows that thoseof the earliest phase were line sketches of th
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