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

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

Alpine Life.
Alpine marmot.
Ibex.
Alpine ptarmigan.

Steppe Life.
Steppe horse.
Steppe suslik.
Moor-hen.

Asiatic Life.
Cave-lion.
Cave-hyæna.
Cave-leopard.

Forest Life.
Stag, lynx, wolf, fox, water-vole, brown bear, giant deer.
Cave-bear.

Meadow Life.
Bison.
Wild cattle.

It would appear that the reindeer, the woolly mammoth, and the woolly rhinoceros were already widely distributed over western Europe, accompanied by the arctic fox (Canis lagopus), the arctic hare (Lepus variabilis), and the banded lemming (Myodes torquatus). There is no proof that the musk-ox had at this time reached its extreme southerly distribution, and it would appear that the arrival of the second type of northern lemming from the region of the river Obi (Myodes obensis) did not occur until the close of Mousterian times,[(21)] because the great migration of these animals is recorded by their abundant remains in the so-called 'lower rodent layer' of all the stations along the Rhine and Danube, such as Sirgenstein, Wildscheuer, and Ofnet, after the final stage of Mousterian industry. In fact, this remarkable little rodent appears to mark the second maximum or close of the fourth glaciation by its migration all over western Europe, and wherever its remains are found in the grotto deposits they furnish one of the most important and positive of prehistoric dates, namely, that of the 'lower rodent layer.' The lemmings surpass all other mammals in the great distances covered by their migrations, and it would appear that this northern species swept all over western Europe at the same time, leaving its remains not only in the caverns along the Danube but in those of Belgium and of Thiede, near Braunschweig. The latter station, Thiede, was not far from the southern border of the Scandinavian glacier; it was subjected to a very severe arctic climate, as the only associates of the Obi lemming were the banded lemming, the arctic fox, the arctic hare, the reindeer, the mammoth, and the musk-ox.

Life of Late Mousterian Times

Second Maximum of Fourth Glaciation
Tundra, Steppe, Alpine, Asiatic and Meadow life, as above.
Obi lemming.
Musk-ox.
Ermine.
Arctic ptarmigan.
Eversmann's weasel (Steppe weasel).

The woolly mammoth now reaches the height of its evolution and specialization; as preserved in the frozen tundras of northern Siberia, and as represented in very numerous drawings and engravings by the Upper Palæolithic artists, it is the most completely known of all fossil mammalia.[(22)] Its proportions, as shown in the accompanying figure, which represents the information gathered from all sources, are entirely different from those of either the Indian or African elephant. The head is very high and surmounted by a great mass of hair and wool; behind this a sharp depression separates the back of the head from the great hump on the back; the hinder portion of the back falls away very rapidly and the tail is short; the overcoat of long hair nearly reaches the ground, and beneath this is a warm undercoating of wool. It is not improbable that the humps on the head and the back were fat reservoirs. The color of the hair was a yellowish brown, varying from light brown to pure brown; woolly hair, from an inch to an inch and a half in length, covered the whole body interspersed with the shorter hairs was a large number of longer and thicker hairs, which formed mane-like patches on the cheeks, chin, shoulders, flanks, and abdomen. A broad fringe of this long hair extended along the sides of the body, as depicted in the work of the Upper Palæolithic artists in the Combarelles Cave. Especially interesting to us is the food found in the stomach and mouth of the frozen Siberian mammoths, which consists chiefly of a meadow flora such as flourishes during the summer in northern Siberia at the present day, including grasses and sedges, wild thyme, beans of the wild oxytropis, also the arctic variety of the upright crowfoot (Ranunculus acer). This was the summer food. The winter food undoubtedly included the leaves and stems of the willow, the juniper, and other winter plants.