“[...] Sixty years ago Senor Marcelino de Sautuola came up- on a large cave on his estate at Altamira, in northern Spain. For thousands of years the entrance had been hermetically sealed by fallen rocks naturally cemented with stalagmite deposits. Blasts for new construction accident- ally opened the entrance. Three years later Sautuola explored the cave, and noticed some curious markings on the walls. One day his little daughter accompanied him. Not compelled, like her father, to stoop as she walked through the cave, she could look up and observe the ceiling. There she saw, in vague outline, the painting of a great bison, magnificently colored and drawn. Many other drawings were found on closer examination of the ceiling and the walls. When, in 1880, Sautuola published his report on these observations, archeologists greeted him with genial scepticism. Some did him the honor of going to inspect the drawings, only to pronounce them the forgery of a hoaxer. For thirty years this quite reasonable incredulity persisted. Then the discovery of other drawings in caves generally conceded to be prehistoric (from their contents of unpolished flint tools, and polished ivory and bone) confirmed Sautuola’s judgment; but Sautuola now was dead. Geologists came to Altamira and testified, with the unanimity of hindsight, that the stalagmite coating on many of the drawings was a paleolithic deposit.”
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.6, Section I, Part 2, 1935 (italics added)
"The whole interpretation of history as progress falters when we consider that these [Old Stone Age cave] statues, bas-reliefs and paintings, numerous though they are, may be but an infinitesimal fraction of the art that expressed or adorned the life of primeval man. What remains is found in caves, where the elements were in some measure kept at bay; it does not follow that prehistoric men were artists only when they were in caves. They may have curved as sedulously and ubiquitously as the Japanese, and may have fashioned statuary as abundantly as the Greeks; they may have painted not only the rocks in their caverns, but textiles, wood, everything— not excepting themselves. They may have created masterpieces far superior to the fragments that survive. In one grotto a tube was discovered, made from the bones of a reindeer, and filled with pigment; in another a stone palette was picked up still thick with red ochre paint despite the transit of two hundred centuries. Apparently the arts were highly developed and widely practised eighteen thousand years ago. Perhaps there was a class of professional artists among paleolithic men; perhaps there were Bohemians starving in the less respectable caves, denouncing the commercial bourgeoisie, plotting the death of academies, and forging antiques."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.6, Section I, Part 2, 1935 (italics added)
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