ABSTRACT
The world of Tuc d'Audoubert is not for the faint-hearted. From the lush, overgrown entrance to this cavern in the French Pyrenees flows a small stream. It is the sort of magical place where elves or fairies might live. The most compelling reasons for doubting that the cave paintings have anything to do with tradition, be it religious, artistic, or any other kind, are numerical. The secret to the Cro-Magnons' knowledge of pigments and painting lies in personal adornment. Quite unlike the occasional, infrequent act of cave painting, decorating the body with pigments and mud probably was a widespread and continuous tradition. There is no doubt that the Cro-Magnons and other early modern humans, even Neanderthals, were capable of personal adornment. And such skills and customs are readily passed on from parent to child. The Cro-Magnons probably had all the biological building bricks to construct a modern mind, including that all-important language faculty.
