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

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

Fig. 242. Entrance to the grotto of Kesslerloch, near Lake Constance. Photograph by N. C. Nelson.

Fig. 243. The famous shelter station of Schweizersbild, under a protecting cliff of limestone, near Lake Constance, Switzerland. On the right stands Dr. Jakob Nüesch, who has devoted three years to the excavation and study of this site. Photograph by N. C. Nelson.

The two famous Swiss stations of Kesslerloch and Schweizersbild, near Lake Constance, appear throughout Magdalenian times to have been in very close touch with the cultural advances of Dordogne. Kesslerloch[(32)] has yielded 12,000 flints of small dimensions, resembling in their succession those of the type station of La Madeleine; also needles, single and double harpoons, dart-throwers, bâtons, as well as the fine engravings mentioned above; bone sculpture is represented here in the unique head of a musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus), in carvings of the reindeer and of other animals on the batons and weapons of the chase. Kesslerloch lies on the edge of a moderately wide valley, traversed by a brook; in this sheltered, well-watered, hilly region, the trees flourished and harbored the forest animals, while the glaciers, retreating and leaving damp and stony areas, were closely followed by the tundra fauna; the woolly rhinoceros and mammoth persisted here longer than in other parts of Europe; the horse of Kesslerloch is said to show resemblances to the Przewalski horse of the desert of Gobi, in central Asia, and is consequently referred to the steppe type. The development of the flints takes place step by step with that of the sister cavern of Schweizersbild, and in early Magdalenian times these flints are found associated with the arrival of the great migration of the arctic tundra rodents, the banded lemmings (Myodes torquatus). A hearth with ashes and coals and many charred bones of old and young mammals, including the woolly rhinoceros, has been found here; the animal life altogether includes twenty-five species of mammals, among them the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, and lion.

Less than four miles distant from Kesslerloch, in a small valley about two miles north of Schaffhausen, is the other famous Swiss station of Schweizersbild. The Crô-Magnons were attracted to this spot by the protecting cliff of isolated limestone rock rising sheer from the meadow-land, at the base of which is a shelter facing southwest, with an entrance of about 30 feet in height, commanding a wide view of the distant valley. In the accumulations at the base of this shelter we find a complete prehistory of the human, industrial, faunal, and climatic changes of this region of Switzerland from early Magdalenian into Neolithic times. It was not until the true early Magdalenian, after both the Aurignacian and Solutrean stages had closed, that man first found his way here during the Bühl advance, the period of the deposition of the Upper Rodent Layer with its cold arctic and steppe fauna;[(33)] but from this time the grotto was occupied at intervals until full Neolithic times. The beginning of these industrial deposits is estimated by Nüesch as having occurred between 24,000 and 29,000 years ago, but we have adopted a somewhat lower and more conservative estimate. In descending order the various layers of this shelter, as studied by Nüesch, are as follows:

Section of the Schweizersbild Deposits

Neolithic

6. Layer of humous earth, between 15 and 19 inches in thickness, containing Neolithic implements.