Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and Art

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

Fig. 95. The two large tundra mammals, the woolly rhinoceros (upper), drawn from the work of Upper Palæolithic artists and from the specimen discovered at Starunia, in Galicia, Austria; and the woolly mammoth (lower). These hardy animals gradually replaced the African-Asiatic pair, Merck's rhinoceros and the straight-tusked elephant. Drawn by Erwin S. Christman. One-sixtieth life size.

This was the period of the deposition of the 'upper drift' over the north German lowlands, the Alps, and northern England, also of the early and late Wisconsin, or 'upper drift,' which spreads very widely over the Eastern States, from Wisconsin southward and eastward to the latitude of New York. The gravels and sands of some of the 'lowest terraces' were also deposited.

Mammalian Life of Mousterian Times

The three successive phases of climate and environment surrounding the Neanderthal men during the period of the development of the Mousterian industry, were in descending order as follows:

3. Extreme Cold Climate of the Last Great Glacial Advance. Period of the late Mousterian industry of La Quina. Spread of all the arctic and tundra mammals over western Europe, including the musk-ox; migrations of the obi and banded lemming of the extreme north. Life and industry of the Neanderthal races, chiefly in the shelters, grottos, and entrances to the caverns.

2. Cold Moist Climate. Period of the middle or 'full Mousterian' industry of the Neanderthal races. Appearance of the tundra life, including well-protected mammals and birds from the arctic region, also descent of the Alpine types to the foot-hills and river borders. First forerunners of the steppe life; the full Eurasiatic forest and field life widely spread over Europe. Life and industry chiefly in the shelters, grottos, and entrances to the caverns. Reindeer very abundant.

1. Warm or Cool Arid Climate. Transition from the Acheulean to the early Mousterian culture, as observed in the stations of La Micoque and of Combe-Capelle. The so-called 'warm Mousterian' fauna, including the surviving hippopotamus, Merck's rhinoceros, and the straight-tusked elephant in northern and southern France; herds of bison, cattle, and wild horses in southwestern France. Tribal life, with the industry partly in open stations, partly under sheltering cliffs.

This is the beginning of the 'Reindeer Period,' for this migrant from Scandinavia, with its companions of the northeastern tundras, the woolly mammoth and the rhinoceros, wandered slowly southward before the advancing Scandinavian ice-fields, which were greatly augmented by the increasingly cold and moist climate. Thus these animals are found in the north with flints of the Mousterian culture before they appear in the more genial region of Dordogne. In the somewhat older Acheulean-Mousterian station of La Micoque, along the Vézère, the fire-hearths contain almost exclusively the remains of horses and relatively few remains of bison and wild cattle, but no reindeer. A fireplace near the station of Combe-Capelle yields numerous remains of the bison, only a few of the horse, and the first of the reindeer. Before the appearance of the reindeer in the valley of the Vézère we may picture the meadow-lands as covered with bison and wild horses, the latter of the type which is now characteristic of the high plateaus of central Asia, while the bison of the period appears to be more similar to the American buffalo than to the surviving European form.

Gradually the tundra animals spread toward the south with the cold climate which for the first time swept all over western Europe. The whole aspect of the country slowly changed with the approach of the reindeer, and the northern flora of the spruce, the fir, and the arctic willow clad the more sheltered river-valleys and hillsides, while the plateaus and fields were partly or wholly deforested.