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

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

Fig. 99. Excavations of the Mousterian culture layer under the cliff of Le Moustier. Photograph by N. C. Nelson.

One such floor has been traced by Worthington Smith[(16)] through Middlesex and on both sides of the Thames. Plant remains occur plentifully on this old land surface, including impressions of portions of leaves, stems of grass, rushes, and sedges. The birch, alder, pine, yew, elm, and hazel have been recognized. The common male fern is of frequent occurrence, while the royal fern (Osmunda regalis) is found in profusion. Upon the whole, this assemblage of plants indicates a temperate climate. The flints described and figured by Worthington Smith are either of the late Acheulean 'Levallois flake' type or else of early Mousterian age. This writer[(17)] notes the great number of instruments known as trimmed flakes, which are found on the Palæolithic 'floor'; these are flakes of large size, trimmed to an implement-like form on one side, while the other side is left perfectly plain; the examples are remarkably constant to one form. The type of implement here described resembles the flakes of Levallois or Combe-Capelle, or even the typical 'point' from Le Moustier. Such flakes, shaped into the Mousterian forms of racloir, or scraper, are very common in the gravels of the Lea and of the Thames.

While the remains of the woolly mammoth are found here, there are also indications of the presence of a well-marked temperate flora. These high-level 'river-drifts' along the Thames[(18)] were certainly deposited when the climatic conditions were temperate, but they are succeeded by deposits indicating a renewed cold period, which may represent the cold 'full Mousterian' times of the Lower Palæolithic habitation of the Thames. Here we find the remarkable sheets of contorted 'drift' attributable to the movements of the frozen soil and subsoil when exposed to the heat of the summer sun. At the same time there may have been deposited along the Thames the alluvial loams and gravels, occasionally containing stones and rocks, which were brought down by ice-rafts; these low-level gravels are not to be confused with the underlying 'old river-gravels' which contain the warm temperate hippopotamus fauna, for they were accumulated under very cold conditions; they yield remains of the woolly rhinoceros and of the mammoth. Thus, on the high levels of the Thames as well as on the low levels we find evidences of the human culture and of the extinct fauna of the period of the fourth great glaciation.

Fig. 100. Mousterian cavern of Wildkirchli. After Bächler. Entrances indicated at 1, 2, and 3, in the side of the limestone cliff. Here, at a height of 4,500 feet above sea-level, Bächler discovered proofs of occupation by Mousterian man in the very heart of the Alpine ice-fields of the Fourth Glacial Stage.

The upper waters of the Rhine and Danube were also frequented by late Acheulean and early Mousterian flint workers. At a point far distant from southern England there is the cavern of Wildkirchli on the Santis Mountains, near Appenzell, in Switzerland; in Mousterian times this was in the very heart of the north Alpine ice-field. The animal life here may indicate that this cavern was open during the period of recession between the two great advances of the fourth glaciation. Here, at a height of 4,500 feet, Bächler[(19)] between 1903-6, discovered proofs of occupation by Neanderthal man during Mousterian times; the flints are not well formed; the presence of crude bone implements may point to late Mousterian times; but the flints are considered by Bächler to be of the same stage as those of Le Moustier. It is asserted that when the Neanderthals followed the chase here the climate was more genial, because the animals found include the stag, Alpine wolf (Cyon alpinus fossilis), cave-bear, cave-lion, cave-leopard (Felis pardus spelæa), badger, marten, and otter, together with the typical Alpine forms, the ibex, chamois, and marmot. But this fauna alone can hardly be taken as proof of a temperate climate, for at this Alpine height we should not expect to discover the tundra life of the period; in fact, it is entirely absent.

Fig. 101. Entrance to the grotto of Sirgenstein. After R. R. Schmidt. "Of all the stations along the Danube by far the most important is that of Sirgenstein ... which was first occupied by the Neanderthals in early Mousterian times and continued to be visited by the Lower and Upper Palæolithic men until the very close of the Upper Palæolithic."

Of all the stations along the Danube, by far the most important is that of Sirgenstein, lying between the modern cities of Nuremberg and Augsburg, which was first occupied by the Neanderthals in early Mousterian times and continued to be visited by the Lower and Upper Palæolithic men until the very close of the Upper Palæolithic. The continuous section of animal life and of human culture which this remarkable cavern yields afforded Schmidt,[(20)] who began his researches here in the spring of 1906, a key to the prehistory of all the eighteen caverns in the region of the upper Danube and upper Rhine. In Sirgenstein the primitive Mousterian culture of the early Neanderthals was found, together with remains of the mammoth, bison, reindeer, a species of wild horse, and the cave-bear; this Mousterian industry closed with a record of the arrival in this region of the Obi lemming from northern Russia. Later on the Crô-Magnon race of Aurignacian times left on the floor of the cavern remains of their flint industry and of their feasts, including the bones of the woolly rhinoceros, mammoth, stag, and reindeer. During Upper Palæolithic Solutrean times the cavern was not occupied; but early in Magdalenian times it was again inhabited by man, and coincident with his return is the arrival of a great migration of the banded lemming (Myodes torquatus) from the arctic tundras of the north. Finally, toward the end of the Upper Palæolithic, in late Magdalenian times, another climatic transition is indicated by the appearance of the pika, or tailless hare (Lagomys pusillus). During the Bronze Age this favorite grotto was again entered, and it was also inhabited during a portion of the Iron Age. The débris of these various cultures, hearths, and deposits of cave loam reach a total thickness of 8½ feet and mark Sirgenstein as first in rank among the Palæolithic stations of Germany.