Images in Early Modern Human Art: Animals, Hand Prints, Figures | Early European History And Religion

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IMAGES IN EARLY MODERN HUMAN PAINTING

Altamira bison

The cave art in Europe falls into three general categories: 1) enigmatic abstract marks such as dots and squiggles; 2) “human” hands; 3) lifelike portrayals of mammoths, horses, bison, lions and other animals.

The images found in cave art are mainly of animals that early man hunted, some of them have lines marked on their flanks that perhaps are spears use to kill them. In Lascaux there is a famous depiction of a partially-disemboweled bison. There are not many images of reindeer even though they were a primary food source. Bears also don't show up much. Some art historians and archaeologists suggest this is because maybe they were ritual, totemic species and rendering them in a cave was inauspicious.

Some of the more interesting images and caves include a frieze of pregnant fat women holding a bison horn found in a subterranean tunnel near Beune, France; a 20 foot-long painting in a the Niaux cave near Toulous that could only reached by swimming over a mile in an underground cave; a painting a figure with a bearded human face, antlers, the eyes of an owl, the tail of a horse and the claws of lion, believed to be a representation of a prehistoric shaman, found near Les Trois Fréres, a French town in the foothills of the Pyrenees. [ World Religions edited by Geoffrey Parrinder, Facts on File Publications, New York]

The 36,000-year-old art in Pech Merle, a cave open to the public, is one of the oldest in Europe. Describing it Christopher Shaw wrote in the New York Times, there “are charcoal drawings of horses, reindeer, mammoths and a rare “wounded man” that many interpret as a trancing shaman...Most riveting were the “twin horses," two life-size horses painted in black and dull rust with heavy outlines and facing in opposite directions, one behind the other, their transparent hindquarters arranged in convincing perspective and their equine forms wedded to the natural shapes on a freestanding boulder...Large spots made by artists who painted the palms of their hands and then slapped them onto the rock, and negative hand prints made by blowing pigment over the hand and top the rock, made the horses shimmer with life. A spectral fish, probably a pike, was superimposed over the horses like a Chagall angel, fusing the ephemeral with the substantial."

When pre-historic cave artists drew spots and lines on animals it often isn’t clear whether they were meant to be symbolic or accurate depictions. Some renderings of horses contains spots like those found on modern Appaloosa horses. It was long thought that the spots on these horses were probably symbolic. According to National Geographic: “Though dappled coats were thought to exist only on a few modern horses, the genotype showed up frequently in DNA analysis of horse bones from western Europe’s Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago).

World Oldest Vulva Engraving

20120205-Vulva images in La Ferrassie.jpg
Vulva images in La Ferrassie cave Nikhil Swaminathan wrote in Archaeology magazine: “Archaeologists have dated an engraving of a vulva found on a one-and-a-half-ton limestone block at Abri Castanet, a collapsed rock shelter in France, to about 37,000 years ago. That figure, however, is only a minimum age for the rock carving. The date, announced in May, actually corresponds to the approximate time when the rock shelter’s roof, of which the engraved block was once a part, collapsed. The engraving is thus one of the earliest examples of European wall art, likely older than the elaborate paintings 200 miles east in Chauvet Cave. [Source: Nikhil Swaminathan, Archaeology, December 6, 2012 |/]

“The block was found directly above a surface containing hundreds of artifacts from the early Aurignacian culture, the earliest modern humans in Europe. An imprint of the vulva on the shelter floor, along with a lack of sediment buildup between the block and the surface, suggested that radiocarbon dating of several pieces of bone smashed by the fallen block would give an accurate age of the roof collapse and an approximate age of the engraving. “We see vulva again and again and again,” says New York University archaeologist Randall White about Aurignacian sites in the region near Abri Castanet. “The fact that they’re repeating the same forms suggests that it is conventionalized in a way that allowed these people to relate to the meaning.”“ |/

Michael Balter wrote in sciencemag.org: “Harold Dibble, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, says the team's dating of the vulva engraving appears sound because it cannot be any younger than the surface onto which it fell and might even be older. "The context of the find is quite clear," Dibble says. As for the long-standing tradition among archaeologists working in France of interpreting such images as vulvas, Dibble says, "Who the hell knows" what they really represent? Dibble adds that such interpretations could be colored by the worldview of Western archaeologists whose culture probably differs greatly from that of prehistoric peoples. "Maybe it's telling us more about the people making those interpretations" than the artists who created the images, Dibble says. On the other hand, he says, the repeated use of this image at other sites in the Vezere valley suggests that it was some sort of "shared iconography" that might identify specific groups of people. Indeed, archaeologists have also identified differences in the styles of personal ornaments and other artifacts that might also reflect different groups or tribes, much as people express their group identities by the way they dress today. [Source: Michael Balter, sciencemag.org, May. 14, 2012 ^=^]

“Paul Pettit, an archaeologist at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, agrees that the new work "provides admirable independent verification of the age of the Castanet rock art that has been suspected for decades." What's more, argues Pettit, a leader of a small but vocal group of archaeologists who have questioned the dating of the Chauvet paintings, the discovery at Abri Castanet helps make their case that the Chauvet art is too sophisticated to be 37,000 years old. "The only other examples of convincingly dated rock art in this period are the painted block from Fumane, which in terms of technical achievement is similar to the Castanet examples," he says. The reason there are so many stylistic differences between the spectacular Chauvet paintings and the relatively simple engravings at Abri Castanet, he insists, is that the Chauvet images are much younger.” ^=^

Paintings in Leang-Leang Cave, Sulawesi

45,500-Year-Old Pig Painting from Sulwesi — World’s Oldest Known Animal Depiction

A well-preserved painting of a pig from the Leang Tedongne cave on Sulawesi may be the oldest known animal image. Dating back 45,500 years, the nearly life-size depiction of a small native warty pig was rendered using red ochre on a rock art panel and appear to be part of a narrative scene. [Source: Archaeology magazine, March 2021]

According to a report published in Science Advances journal the painting measures 136 centimeters by 54 centimeters (53 inches by 21 inches) and depicts a pig with horn-like facial warts characteristic of adult males of the species. There are two hand prints above the back of the pig, which also appears to be facing two other pigs that are only partially preserved.

Maxime Aubert, the co-author of the report, told the BBC: “It provides the earliest evidence of human settlement of the region. “The people who made it were fully modern, they were just like us, they had all of the capacity and the tools to do any painting that they liked." Aubert used the uranium-series isotope dating technique described above on a calcite deposit that had formed on top of the painting and determined that the deposit was 45,500 years old. Animal paintings found in cave were dated at 44,000 years old “This makes the artwork at least that old. "But it could be much older because the dating that we're using only dates the calcite on top of it," he added. [Source: BBC, January 14, 2021]

“Co-author Adam Brumm said: "The pig appears to be observing a fight or social interaction between two other warty pigs." To make the hand prints, the artists would have had to place their hands on a surface before spitting pigment over it, the researchers said. The team hopes to try and extract DNA samples from the residual saliva as well. The painting may be the world's oldest art depicting a figure, but it is not the oldest manmade art. In South Africa, a hashtag-like doodle created 73,000 years ago and discovered ib 2018, is believed to be the oldest known drawing.

Is a 130,000-Year-Old Stingray-Shaped Rock the Oldest Animal Art

Sarah Kuta wrote on Smithsonian online: In 2018, citizen scientist Emily Brink was exploring near Still Bay, a town on the southern coast of South Africa, when an unusual rock caught her eye. It was symmetrical, with four protruding points — similar to the shape of a kite. In April 2024, researchers said the rock could be a sand sculpture created to look like a blue stingray (Dasyatis chrysonata), which are often found in southern Africa. If that’s the case, the artifact could be the earliest known example of humans creating art resembling another species, according to a study published in the journal Rock Art Research. [Source: Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian, April 5, 2024]

130,000-year-old stingray-shaped rock?

The rock is made of aeolianite, which forms when sediment solidifies because of wind. Researchers suspect the piece is an ammoglyph, a preserved pattern carved into sand.A human artist may have traced the body of an actual stingray — likely a male or small immature female — to create the piece, which has the correct proportions and a “near-perfect outline,” as study co-authors Charles Helm and Alan Whitfield write in the Conversation. They add that the rock also has a “tail stub” that may have been intentionally “amputated” by the artist. Helm is a paleontologist at Nelson Mandela University, while Whitfield is the emeritus chief scientist at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity.

The researchers emphasize that they cannot come to any definitive conclusions. They also can’t date the stone directly, for fear of damaging or destroying it. Instead, they used a technique called optically stimulated luminescence to date nearby rocks, which suggested the artwork could be roughly 130,000 years old. The rock is the first and only known example of a possible tracing from that time period, Helm tells IFLScience’s Tom Hale. “The chances of something like this being preserved and amenable to our interpretation are remote, so it is possible that this may be the only example ever identified, but we can always hope that more will become apparent,” he says.

But why a stingray? For one, the creatures are relatively flat, making them easier to trace than other animals. Perhaps, Helm adds, their venomous stings may have “commanded fear and respect” that made stingrays worthy artistic subjects. Previously, the oldest known recognized artwork depicting an animal is the 45,000-year-old painting of a pig in Sulawesi mentioned above. Other rare examples include a painting of a cattle-like beast found on the island of Borneo, which could be 40,000 years old, and a painting of a “pig-deer” in Indonesia, which could be 35,400 years old.

Early Painted Images of Human Beings

There are few depictions of human beings in the caves and when they are rendered they tend to be crudely drawn. The only image of a human in Lascaux cave in southern France is a human with a bird mask with a large beak, thought to be a shaman of some sort, being charged by a bison with a spear in its stomach. In La Marche cave there is a 15,000-year-old profile of made by a modern human of one of his own.

Describing the image of woman in a remote alcove of Chauvet Cave, as seen from a images from a digital camera rigged to a pole, Judith Thurman wrote in The New Yorker, “Wrapped around or, as it appears, straddling the phallus is the bottom half of a woman's body, with heavy thighs and bent knees that taper at the ankle, Her vulva is darkly shaded, and she has no feet. Hovering above her is a bison's head and hump, and an aroused white eye. But a line branching from its neck looks like a human arm with fingers. The relationship of these figure to each other ...is among the great enigmas in cave art, The woman's position suggests that she may be squatting in childbirth, and the animals, on a level with her loins, seems to be streaming away from her."

Canaica del Calar in Spain

World's Oldest Figurative Art “Pornographic"?

Chip Walter wrote in National Geographic: “In Hohle Fels, archaeologists have uncovered objects whose messages are so sexually explicit they might require a parental warning. One is a carving of a woman with exaggerated breasts and genitalia, found in 2008. At least 35,000 years old, the Venus of Hohle Fels is the most ancient figure yet discovered that is indisputably human. Earlier the team had found a polished rod of siltstone, about eight inches long and an inch in diameter, with a ring etched at one end—likely a phallic symbol. A few feet away from the Venus figurine, the team uncovered a flute carved from a hollow griffon vulture bone, and in Geissenklösterle Cave found three other flutes, one made of ivory and two fashioned from a swan’s wing bone. They are the oldest known musical instruments in the world. We don’t know whether these people had drugs. But they clearly had the sex and rock and roll. [Source: Chip Walter, National Geographic, January 2015]

Eliza Strickland wrote in Discover: “A tiny ivory carving of a busty woman may be not only the oldest known example of erotic art–it may be the oldest art depicting any human figure at all. Named the Venus of Hohle Fels after the cave in southwestern Germany where it was recently excavated, the object dates to at least 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, based on more than 30 radiocarbon measurements conducted at the site [Discovery News]. The statue is also “bordering on the pornographic” by our modern standards, one expert says, with its huge, bulbous breasts and oversized genitalia. [Source: Eliza Strickland, Discover, May 13, 2009]/^\

“The Venus, which is described in a paper in Nature, was carved from a woolly mammoth tusk, and measures just over two inches long. In place of a head the statue has a polished ring, suggesting that the carving may have been hung from a string and worn like a pendant. The newfound object reminds experts of the most famous of the sexually explicit figurines from the Stone Age, the Venus of Willendorf, discovered in Austria a century ago. It was somewhat larger and dated at about 24,000 years ago, but it was in a style that appeared to be prevalent for several thousand years. Scholars speculate that these Venus figurines, as they are known, were associated with fertility beliefs or shamanistic rituals [The New York Times]. /^\

Ancient Cave Painters Were Realists, DNA Reveals

Chauvet cave paintings

Associated Press reported: “Cave painters during the Ice Age were more like da Vinci than Dali, sketching realistic depictions of horses they saw rather than dreaming them up, a study of ancient DNA finds. It's not just a matter of aesthetics: Paintings based on real life can give first-hand glimpses into the environment of tens of thousands of years ago. But scientists have wondered how much imagination went into animal drawings etched in caves around Europe.” [Source: Associated Press, November 8, 2011 ~||~]

An “analysis published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences focused on horses since they appeared most frequently on rock walls. The famed Lascaux Cave in the Dordogne region of southwest France and the Chauvet Cave in southeast France feature numerous scenes of brown and black horses. Other caves like the Pech Merle in southern France are adorned with paintings of white horses with black spots. Past studies of ancient DNA have only turned up evidence of brown and black horses during that time. That led scientists to question whether the spotted horses were real or fantasy. ~||~

“To get at the genetics of equine coat color, an international team led by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany analyzed DNA from fossilized bones and teeth from 31 prehistoric horses. The samples were recovered from more than a dozen archaeological sites in Siberia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the Iberian peninsula. It turned out six of the horses had a genetic mutation that gives rise to a spotted coat, suggesting that ancient artists were drawing what they were seeing. Brown was the most common coat color, found in 18 horses. ~||~

“Researchers who were not part of the study praised the use of genetics, saying it supports their observations. Paleoanthropologist John Shea of Stony Brook University in New York said he was not surprised that cave artists were in tune with their surroundings since they needed to know all they could about their prey to hunt them. "These artists were better observers of their natural environment than many humans are today," Shea said. Just because cave art was rooted in reality doesn't mean Ice Age painters lacked creativity. Archaeologist Paul Pettitt of the University of Sheffield in England said ancient artists were "immensely creative," using techniques such as charcoal shading that are still found in modern art.” ~||~

Dappled Horses of Pech-Merle,

DNA Helps Scientists Decode Dappled Horse Paintings

Nikhil Swaminathan wrote in Archaeology magazine: “Genetic material from the bones and teeth of wild horses, some of which died more than 20,000 years ago, has answered a longstanding debate about some Paleolithic cave artists: Were these ancient painters realists, depicting the natural world they saw around them, or did they portray more imaginative representations? [Source: Nikhil Swaminathan, Archaeology, Volume 65 Number 2, March/April 2012 =/=]

“One of the paintings in question, The Dappled Horses of Pech-Merle, in a cave in southern France, is a nearly 25,000-yearold depiction of horses with spotted coats. While spots are seen in many modern horses, they were believed to be a product of later domestication and thus would not have coexisted with humans in the Paleolithic. =/=

“That belief turned out to be wrong. An international team of scientists examined ancient DNA from predomesticated horse remains found in Europe and Siberia. The team found gene variants common to domesticated spotted horses in more than 20 percent of their samples. Though the finding doesn't rule out some ancient creative license, the artists could have seen spotted horses in the wild. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers report, "At least for wild horses, Paleolithic cave paintings were closely rooted in the real-life appearance of the animals."” =/=

Oldest Hand Prints and Stencils

Hand stencils are common motifs on the walls of Paleolithic and Neolithic caves in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Some of have missing digits. Others show the sleeves of clothing. Many hand stencils from the Gravettian cultural period (roughly 28,000 to 22,000 years ago) were made in caves in southern France . About 150 hands were stenciled onto the wall of Grotte Cosquer, an underwater cave discovered near Marseilles that can only be reached through a treacherous underwater tunnel in which three divers have drowned. Cosquer was discovered in 1991. At first is was regarded as a fraud with many making the claims based on photographs because they were unable to scuba dive into the cave. But later carbon dating proved that some of images were at least 27,000 years old, making them among the oldest cave art known.

Quesang, Tibet (169,000 and 226,000 years ago): Fossilized children's handprints and footprints found near a hot spring in Tibet could be 200,000 years old, according to one study, making them the oldest cave art ever found. The prints were made in travertine stone which is soft when it's wet and hardens when it dries. There is a debate among archaeologists as to whether the handprints are really art and whether they are as old as claimed. A study on the prints was published September 2021 in the journal Science Bulletin. “The question is: What does this mean? How do we interpret these prints? They’re clearly not accidentally placed,” study co-author Thomas Urban, a scientist at Cornell University’s Tree-Ring Laboratory, said. [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, February 3, 2024; Isis Davis-Marks, Smithsonian magazine, September 17, 2021

Bouquet of Hands from Borneo

1) Sulawesi Caves, Indonesia (around 40,000 years old): The world's oldest recognized hand stencil comes from the Leang Timpuseng Cave in the Maros-Pangkep karst area on the Island of Sulawesi. The site also includes some of the most ancient animal paintings. Perhaps they were made by migrants who ultimately made their way to Australia. The Indonesian painted caves at Maros in Sulawesi are also famous for their hand stencils.[Source: Permanent Delegation of the Republic of Indonesia to UNESCO, 2015]

2) Kalimantan Caves, Borneo, Indonesia (around 40,000 years old): Following research by Jean-Michel Chazine, some 1500 negative handprints have been discovered in 30 Stone Age caves in the Sangkulirang area of Eastern Kalimantan. According to initial dating tests they were created during the Mesolithic. Later some were dated to be much older.

3) El Castillo Cave, Spain (c.37,300 B.C.): More very old hand stencils come from the Aurignacian cave complex of El Castillo. Some 55 other hand silhouettes and other symbols can be seen in the cave, several of which have also been dated to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. Since this period of early Aurignacian art coincides with the first arrival of anatomically modern man, speculation has arisen that these hand paintings were made by Neanderthals. Sceptics consider this unlikely.

4) Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, France (c.30,000 B.C.): In total, the cave contains 12 red ochre hand prints, 9 hand stencils and some 450 palm prints — mostly on the Panel of Hand Stencils in the Gallery of Hands. In the Panel of the Red Dots, a cave painting discovered close to the cave entrance, there is a cluster of large dots, roughly in the shape of a mammoth. The dots were made by dipping the palm of the right hand into red paint and then applying it to the wall.

5) Aboriginal Art: Northern Coast of Australia (c.30,000 B.C.): Hand stencils are a prominent feature of both Ubirr Rock painting and the ajoining region of Kimberley Rock art. Although the oldest Aboriginal rock art is believed to date from about 30,000 B.C., this has not been scientifically confirmed. See also the later Bradshaw Paintings (now called Gwion art) from the same Kimberley area.

6) Cosquer, France (c.25,000 B.C.): Part of the prehistoric art which decorates this cave consists of 65 hand stencils, dating back to Gravettian culture.

7) Pech Merle, France (c.25,000 B.C.): This Upper Paleolithic shelter is famous for its polychrome mural known as The Dappled Horses of Pech-Merle, which itself contains a number of stencilled hand prints.

8) Gargas Cave, France (c.25,000 B.C.): Located in the Hautes-Pyrenees, not far from the rock shelters at Niaux and Trois Freres, the cave contains rock engravings, artifacts, paintings andmobiliary art from the Mousterian to the Magdalenian, including numerous 'negative hands' created in red ochre or manganese, using a stencil technique. In addition, there are some 200 handprints, mostly of the left hand. Some of them are lacking one or more fingers, due either to ritual amputation or frostbite.

9) Roucadour Cave Art, France (c.24,000 B.C.): Stylistically similar to the parietal works at Pech Merle Cave, the art at Roucadour Cave includes a number of vivid negative hand paintings.

10) Abri du Poisson Cave, France (c.23,000 B.C.): France In addition to its best known item of Gravettian art — namely, the bas-relief limestone sculpture of a salmon — this rock shelter has a single legible hand stencil.

11) Karawari Caves, Papua New Guinea (c.18,000 B.C.): An extensive network of 250 caves and rock shelters in the East Sepik Karawari river region contain the greatest examples of hand stencils and other types of parietal art in Melanesia. In the Meakambut and Namata caves for instance, there are palm prints made by young male initiates painted with a combination of blood and clay.

Hand prints in Chauvet Cave

12) Maltravieso Cave, Spain (c.18,000 B.C.): This centre of Solutrean art at Caceres, Extremadura, contains numerous animal paintings and engravings as well as an outstanding cluster of 71 stencilled handprints, many of which are missing fingers.

13) Bayol Cave, France (17,000 B.C.): The sole handprint from the French rock shelter Bayol II (Collias II), situated near the Pont du Gard aqueduct, is thought to have been left by a very small child.

14) La Garma Cave, Spain (c.17,000 B.C.): There are 32 hand stencils, plus a series of red dots and other simple red ochre animal figures from the era of Solutrean art, which span the entire length of the cave's 300 meter Lower Gallery.

15) Lascaux, France (c.17,000-13,000 B.C.): In addition to its prehistoric engravings and beautiful animal paintings, Lascaux also has a very small number of hand stencils.

16) Altamira, Spain (c.17,000 B.C.): Amongst its other examples of parietal art, this famous Cantabrian rock shelter boasts a number of hand stencils sprayed with red pigment.

17) Font de Gaume Cave, France (c.14,000 B.C.): In addition to its magnificent bison frieze, the cave has a total of four hand stencils.

18) Rouffignac Cave, France (c.14,000-12,000 B.C.): This vast underground cave complex is filled with over 250 prehistoric cave drawings, as well as abstract symbols and signs, and a number of hand prints.

19) Cougnac Cave, France (c.14,000 B.C.): The Magdalenian art here includes three human figures and about 50 hand stencils, as well as numerous fingerprints in black and red.

20) Les Combarelles, France (c.12,000 B.C.): This centre of Magdalenian art, has over 600 drawings of animals, but only one legible hand stencil.

21) Fern Cave, Australia (c.10,000 B.C.): This north Queensland rock shelter contains a range of hand stencils and other aboriginal rock paintings dating to the beginning of Mesolithic art in the tenth millennium B.C..

22) Gua Ham Masri II Cave, East Borneo, Indonesia (c.8,000 B.C.) contains about 140 hand stencils (equal male/female). Most of this ancient art dates back to the early Mesolithic.

23) Cave of Hands, Santa Cruz, Argentina (Cueva de las Manos) (7,300 B.C.): One of the major prehistoric sites of South American hunter-gatherer groups during the Early Holocene epoch, the cave contains a number of painted animal figures, a range of geometric shapes, and a sensational panel of rock art hand paintings — mostly stencilled — dated to around 7,500 B.C..

Cueva de las Manos (Cave of Hands) Santa Cruz, Argentina

24) Catal Huyuk, Turkey (c.5,000-3,700 B.C.): Red ochre handprints dating from the early period of Neolithic art have also been discovered here, along with a large quantity of animal and human imagery. Along with the other major archeological mound in southern Anatolia, at Gobekli Tepe, this large Chalcolithic settlement is the best-preserved Neolithic site excavated to date.

25) Elands Bay Cave, South Africa (c.4,000 B.C.): This Neolithic shelter is noted for its clusters of several hundred handprints, stylistically matched with others about 6,000 years old.

26) Handprint Cave of Belize (Actun Uayazba Kab) (c.1500 B.C.): Discovered in 1996, Handprint Cave is named after the stencilled outlines of human hands and other hand art created during the Mayan culture. It contains a range of other pictographs and petroglyphs.

27) Red Hands Cave, NSW, Australia, (less than 1,000 B.C.):Famous site of Aboriginal rock art, noted for its Neolithic collage of hand prints and hand stencils, left by from adults and children, in hues of red, yellow and white ochre. Aborigine artists filled their mouths with a mixture of water, ochre, and animal fat (from a kangaroo, emu, or echidna) and blew it across their hand to make the stencil.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated May 2024