The strange interment which gives Ofnet its distinction belongs to the period of Azilian-Tardenoisian industry.[(12)] This conclusion is not weakened by the absence of Azilian harpoons or painted pebbles, because at this time the cave of Ofnet served its frequenters only as a place of burial; there are no hearths or flint workshops to indicate continued residence, as during earlier Upper Palæolithic times.

This great ceremonial burial seems to afford the only positive evidence to be found in all western Europe of the kind of people who were pursuing the Azilian industry. The larger Ofnet grotto opens toward the southwest and has a length of 39 feet and a width of 36 feet. It was first entered in early Aurignacian times and shows successive layers of Aurignacian, early Solutrean, and late Magdalenian cultures, above which lies a thick deposit of the Azilian-Tardenoisian, in which is found the most remarkable interment of all Palæolithic times.

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Fig. 253. Section across the entrance of the great grotto of Ofnet near the Danube, occupied at various times from the beginning of the Upper Palæolithic to the close of the Bronze Age. After R. R. Schmidt. IX. Deposits of the Middle Ages and of the La Tène and Hallstatt cultures. VIII. Deposits of the Upper Neolithic. VII. Azilian layer containing the great burial of 33 skulls. VI. Late Magdalenian layer containing the banded lemmings of the tundras. V. Late Solutrean layer with typical laurel-leaf spear points. IV., III. Deposits of late and early Aurignacian age, III. containing arctic rodents. II. Dolomite sand with a few teeth of the mammoth and bones of the woolly rhinoceros marked by the teeth of hyænas.

This is a ceremonial burial of thirty-three skulls of people belonging to two distinct races: respectively, brachycephalic and dolichocephalic, and certainly not related in any way to the Crô-Magnon race. In one group twenty-seven skulls were found embedded in ochre and arranged in a sort of nest, with the faces all looking westward. As the skulls in the centre were more closely pressed together and crushed than those on the outside, it seems probable that these skulls were added one by one from time to time, those on the outside being the most recent additions. About a yard distant a similar nest was found, containing six more skulls embedded and arranged in exactly the same manner. The interment probably took place shortly after death and certainly before the separate bones had been disintegrated by decomposition, for not only the lower jaw but a number of the neck vertebra were found with each skull. The heads had been severed from the necks by a sharp flint, the marks of which are plainly visible on some of the vertebræ.

Fig. 254. Burial nest of six skulls, all facing westward, from the large grotto of Ofnet. After R. R. Schmidt.

It is noteworthy that most of these skulls are those of women and young children, there being only four adult male skulls. On this account some advance the theory of cannibalism; others that, being taken captive by a tribe of enemies, these unfortunate people were offered in sacrifice, in which case decapitation was the means of death. But, then, how explain the abundant ornaments of stag teeth and snail shells (Helix nemoralis) with which the skulls of the women and little children were decorated, and the treasured implements of flint with which all save one of the men and a few of the women and children were provided?