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

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

(5) Lower Aurignacian. Implements of stone and bone. Remains of an infant.

(4) Upper Mousterian. Rich in small implements and large tools of quartzite. Merck's rhinoceros very abundant.

(3) Typical Mousterian flints and quartzites. Merck's rhinoceros.

(2) Early Mousterian industry. Bones of cave-bear and Merck's rhinoceros.

(1) Acheulean flints.

The entrance to this grotto is on the side of a high hill overlooking the valley and might easily have been barricaded against attack. In early Acheulean times, when the flint workers were on the very floor of the grotto, the lower entrance of the cavern was still open, leading far into the heart of the mountain. The successive accumulations of débris, cave loam, fire-stones, bones, and innumerable flints, together with great blocks falling over the entrance of the cavern, reached a height of 45 feet, so that during the Upper Palæolithic only the upper entrance to the cavern was used by the artists of Magdalenian times. The subsequent Azilian and Eneolithic cultures were crowded under the very roof of the grotto at the sides.

This station, repaired to and then abandoned by tribe after tribe over a period estimated at present as not less than 50,000 years, is a monumental volume of prehistory, read and interpreted by the archæologist almost as clearly as if the whole record were in writing.

The first positive evidences of the use of fire are the layers of charred wood and bones frequently found in the industrial deposits of early Acheulean times.

Geographic and Climatic Changes

During the early period of development of the Acheulean industry, the geography, the climate, and the plant and animal life continued to present exactly the same aspect as during Chellean times. The mammals which we find in Thuringia in the lower travertines of the valley of the Ilm, at Taubach, near Weimar, and at Ehringsdorf, mingled with flints of early Acheulean industry, are of the same species as those found in the valley of the Somme mingled with the implements of the Chellean industry. The southern mammoth occurs at Taubach, and we find the straight-tusked elephant (E. antiquus), Merck's rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the lion, and the hyæna representing the ancient African-Asiatic migrants, while the north European and Asiatic life is represented by the giant deer, roe-deer, wild goat, brown bear, wolf, badger, marten, otter, beaver, meadow hamster, and shrew. Grazing in the meadows were the aurochs, or wild ox, and the wisent, or bison. There was one variety of horse, probably of the forest type. Thus, the fauna as a whole contains six Asiatic types, or eight if we include the bison and wild cattle. Of the forest life there are nine species, including the wild boar (Sus scrofa ferus) not mentioned above.