1180 A merican A nthropologist [65, 19631

tribe while carrying out varied ethnological investigations. Many of his shots, such as
the glimpse of a young husband taking leave of his recent deceased wife (No. lOl), are
of scenes that would not usually be available to travelers, explorers, or ordinary pro-
fessional photographers.
The primary focus of this volume is on the artistic and humanistic aspects of tribal
life, though technological and ritualistic aspects are also well represented. The largest
number of pictures are of the CrahB, but photographs of the Javahb, Carajh, Makfi-
Guariba, Umutina, Cashinha, Suy&,Urukd, and Tucuna are included. The value of
these pictures is considerably enhanced by summary accounts of each of these tribes
and by thirty-six pages of sympathetic, amusing, and illuminating commentaries
covering almost all the pictures.
These ethnographic passages, selected for dramatic effects and personalized with
subjective interpretations, are designed to appeal to the general reader. The material is
often oriented to demonstrate that the way of life of the Indian may be as good if not
better than city living. Unique occurrences are a t times presented as being the general
pattern. The style is sometimes picturesque in approach and often non-English in man-
ner of expression but seldom in need of clarification.
The outstanding photographic work will serve as an excellent record for the an-
thropologist, who will appreciate its esthetic qualities and research value. He should,
however, use the author’s more professional publications as his written sources of data.

ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY

The Eternal PrPsent: A Contribution on Constancy and Chaizge. [Vol. l:] The Beginnings
of Art. S. GIEDION.(Bollingen Series XXXV; The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the
Fine Arts, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., vol. 6 [1957 lectures],
part 1.) New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1962. (Distributed by Pantheon Books,
A Division of Random House, Inc., N. Y.) xxi, 588 pp., bibliography, 350 illustra-
tions, index, 5 maps, 20 color plates. $12.50.
Reviewed by AND& LEROI-GOURHAN,
Mushe de I’Homme, Paris
The title of Mr. Giedion’s book, The Eternal Presertt, expresses both the plan and the
justification of the work; for the author is not a prehistorian but a well-known theore-
tician of esthetics and art. Thus he approaches the Paleolithic past from the point of
view of the present, in the manner long typical of ethnographic comparativism.
If the book is taken as the result of an esthetician’s consideration of abstraction,
perspective, and movement in Paleolithic art, one is pleased to find in it some very
original ideas, and ones which offer new avenues for the study of all art from Lascaux to
our own times. In the chapters on magical symbols, fertility symbols, sacred animals, or
human figures, one finds interesting ideas borrowed from very diverse sources which
call up fruitful associations of ideas in the reader. I n the last part of the book, “The
space conception of history,” the author is on his own grounds and sets forth a whole
series of his personal views on Paleolithic space as seen by a modern mentality.
The illustrations are very good, extremely copious (350 figures), and always oriented
to the theme of the book: the permanence of the laws of representation. Thus there is a
large positive element in Mr. Giedion’s book, which tends to demonstrate once again
that it is possible to look a t Paleolithic art with modern eyes.
There is also a negative element: the work is not presented as a study in prehistory,
but its form alone will make it appear to be a manual of prehistoric art. But Mr.
Gictlion, despite his intelligence and his merits, is by no means a prehistorian, and this
 Book Reviews 1181
is a pity because the book would have been improved considerably had the author been
more familiar with the literature and had he been able to treat his examples quantita-
tively. His demonstration of transparency from the superimposition of animal figures is
very interesting insofar as i t concerns intermingled bisons or horses, but to demonstrate
the representation of internal organs with a single example (a small fragment of a
salmon carved of bone, p. 60) is not convincing; although other art styles have repre-
sented animal or human internal organs by transparency, Paleolithic art did not do so
and it is significant to point out this fact. Likewise, it is difficult to follow what is said
about hand prints: the topic does pertain to the “eternal present,” but to what degree
is it demonstrated that the Gargas or Castillo hands correspond in ideology to those of
Arizona or Monte Bego? The author presents a very interesting set of examples, but he
barely sketches the internal study of representations of the hand. In the chapter on
fertility symbols there are some pertinent comparisons between the Paleolithic figures
and those of all subsequent epochs. I t is unfortunate that the author felt it necessary
(p. 208) to repeat the copulation interpretation of the scene a t Combarelles which is
the sole evidence for such a representation in Paleolithic art, since it is evidence, rather,
of an erroneous reading of two superimposed bovine hindquarters. The ethnologist will
criticize rather severely the pages dealing with animals and totemism. Difficult enough
to define when it is a question of ethnographic facts, totemism, when it refers to the
Paleolithic, is undemonstrable. That the Reindeer Age hunters had strong psychic ties
with the animal world is only a natural assumption, but if totemism consists simply in
depicting animals it is devoid of meaning. The same holds for the supposed shamanism
of Lascaux man. Several criticisms could be made of the chronological attributions in
which the author tries to apply the frequently vague divisions of the classical chronol-
ogy. He steps beyond his knowledge when he implies (p. 307) that engravings on clay
were in general replaced by wall engravings; this is by no means demonstrated. It would
be easy to multiply these examples to show that Mr. Giedion is no prehistorian. But to
do so would be to lose sight of the aim and also the spirit of his work, in which some
very striking ideas about the general nature of representation are formulated in the
course of a deep incursion into the most ancient art.
The specialist will find it difficult to avoid consulting this attractive book; he will
only regret that one is here once more called upon to examine everything of modern
man which is recognizable in Paleolithic man, rather than, perhaps, to make of him (on
the basis of his eternally present behavior) something else than another Eskimo or
Australian. [Translated from the French by the Book Review Editor.]

A r t and Mankind: Larousse Encyclopedia of Prehistoric and Ancient Art. RENB

HUYCHE (ed.) New York: Prometheus Press, 1962.414 pp., 729 illustrations, index,
maps, 32 color plates. $17.95.
Reviewed by GEORGEKUBLER,Yale University
The publishers call this work (originally appearing in French in 1957) an encyclo-
paedia, but it is actually a survey of ancient art from palaeolithic beginnings through
Greco-Roman civilization, including chapters on India and China as well as on “primi-
tive art,” both living and old, Thirty-two luminaries of European academic life sign 56
sections grouped in seven chapters. The art-historical set of the entire text is given by
RenC Huyghe, who wrote the Introduction and six of seven opening chapter sections,
totalling 63 pages (including illustrations) and entitled “Art Forms and Society,”
which purport to be a philosophy of art. Huyghe regards art as “spiritual respiration”