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

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

Fig. 189. Human skull-tops cut into ceremonial or drinking bowls, from the Magdalenian layer of Placard, Charente. After Breuil and Obermaier.

These are the best preserved Magdalenian remains which have been discovered in France up to the present time. The matter of chief significance is the survival of modes of burial characteristic of the Crô-Magnons in Aurignacian times, with the use of color and of ornaments and with the body in some instances folded and bandaged.

In the great grotto of Placard, near Rochebertier, Charente, a new feature in the mode of interment has been discovered—the separation of the head from the body.[AW] The previous ceremonial burials, which began certainly among the Neanderthals in Mousterian times, always show the custom of burying the entire body; in the Upper Palæolithic there commences the new custom of imbedding the body in ochre or red coloring matter, and this obtains from the Aurignacian burials of Grimaldi to the Azilian burial of Mas d'Azil. The flexing of the limbs is probably also an Upper Palæolithic custom. It would appear as if the new ceremonial of Placard had been introduced in the earliest Magdalenian times, for in the lowest Magdalenian layers four skulls were found closely crowded together, with the top of the cranium turned downward; of other portions of the skeleton only a humerus and a femur were found. In an upper layer of the same industrial stage a woman's skull and jaw were found, surrounded by snail shells, many of them perforated. Still more singular is the occurrence in Magdalenian strata of this grotto of two separate skull-tops, fashioned by some sharp flint implement into bowls (Fig. 189).

Again, at Arcy-sur-Cure three skulls have been discovered placed closely together, and with them a flint knife in a layer superposed upon an Aurignacian industry. The Placard type of burial of the head only is shown again in the Azilian stage at Ofnet, Bavaria.

The uncertainty regarding the racial affinity of the men of Magdalenian culture has now been entirely removed by the discovery, in February, 1914, of two skeletons at Obercassel, near Bonn, the first instance of complete human skeletons of Quaternary age being found in Germany.[(12)] As reported by Verworn,[(13)] the skeletons lay little more than a yard apart; they were covered by great slabs of basalt, and lay in a deposit of loam deeply tinged with red. This red coloring matter, which extended completely over the skeletons and surrounding stones, indicates that it was a ceremonial burial similar to that practised by the Aurignacian Crô-Magnons. Along with the skeletons were found bones of animals and several specimens of finely carved bone, but no flint implements of any kind. The bone implements include a finely polished 'lissoir' of beautiful workmanship, placed beneath the head of one of the skeletons; the handle is carved into a small head of some animal resembling a marten; the sides show the notched decoration so typical of the French Magdalenian. The second specimen of carved bone is one of the small, flat, narrow horse-heads, engraved on both sides, such as are found at Laugerie Basse and in the Pyrenees. One of the skeletons is of a woman about twenty years of age, and, as is usual in young female skeletons, it exhibits the racial characters in a much less marked degree than the male skeleton, which belongs to a man of between forty and fifty years; the cephalic index is 70 per cent; the supraorbital ridges are well developed, and the orbits are distinctly rectangular; the limb bones indicate a body about 155 cm., or 5 feet 1 inch, in height.

Fig. 190. The skulls of two skeletons of the Crô-Magnon race, one male (right) the other female (left), recently discovered at Obercassel near Bonn, associated with Magdalenian implements. After Bonnet.

In contrast to this more refined skull, the extremely broad and low face of the man is entirely disproportionate to the moderately broad forehead and well rounded skullcap; the breadth of the face is 153 mm. and exceeds the greatest width of the skull, which is only 144 mm. This is a markedly disharmonic type, the width of the face being due not only to the broad upper jaw but to the exceptional size and breadth of the cheek-bones. The skull is decidedly dolichocephalic, the cephalic index being 74 per cent; the brain capacity is about 1,500 c.cm.; the orbits are rectangular, and above them extends an unbroken supraorbital ridge, with a slight median frontal eminence; the nasal opening is relatively small; the lower jaw has a strongly marked chin; the crowns of the teeth have been worn down until the enamel has almost disappeared. While the muscular attachments indicate great bodily strength, the height does not exceed 5 feet 3 inches. As pronounced Crô-Magnon features, both of the Obercassel skulls show an unusually wide face; in both the profiles are straight and the root of the nose depressed, the nose is narrow, and the orbits are rectangular. But, observes Bonnet, the greatest width of these skulls is not found across the parietals, as in the typical Crô-Magnons, but just above the ear region, a much lower position; in this respect the Obercassel skulls resemble the skull of the Chancelade skeleton.

This very important discovery of two undoubted descendants of the Crô-Magnon race associated with bone implements of lower Magdalenian workmanship appears to prove conclusively that the Crô-Magnons were the art-loving race. The Obercassel skeletons confirm the evidence afforded by the burials in France that these people were of low stature; perhaps because of the severe climatic conditions of Magdalenian times they had lost the splendid physical proportions of the Crô-Magnons living along the Riviera in Aurignacian times. The skull also, while retaining all the pronounced Crô-Magnon characters, had undergone a modification in the point of greatest width.

In the reduction of the stature of the woman to 5 feet 1 inch and of the man to 5 feet 3 inches, and in the reduction of the brain capacity to 1,500 c.cm., we may be witnessing the result of exposure to very severe climatic conditions in a race which retained its fine physical and mental characteristics only under the more genial climatic conditions of the south.