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About a hundred years ago a Heidelberg scholar by the name of Schoetensack
called attention to an astonishing bone discovery: in the little village
of Mauer they kept digging up remains of ancient
animals while excavating gravel and sand. These were of types that
had never been noted in southern Germany: saber toothed tigers, lions,
elephants, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses among them. Dr. Schoetensack started
avidly collecting whatever they brought him and what he himself discovered.
But he awaited futilely the discovery that would please him the most:
human remains were not to be found in the Mauer gravel pit.
Twenty years later, someone wrote on 21 October 1907, the door of the
Hochschwender Inn in Mauer opened. The gravel pit worker Daniel Hartmann,
called "Sand Daniel," came in and shouted: "Today I found Adam!"
"Sand Daniel" had really found something at the foot of a gravel pit wall
some 20 meters high that got Dr. Schoetensack excited and would make the
village of Mauer famous: a human mandible.
Just a jawbone, nothing more. But this jawbone caused a sensation. Dr.
Schoetensack published a year later (1908) a precise scientific description.
In that it was stated that had a mandible without teeth been discovered,
it would not have been possible to recognize it as human: "the absolutely
certain proof that we are dealing with a human part lies solely in the
nature of the denture."
The teeth of apes, for example gorillas, differ from ours, but not those
of the Mauer mandible. The being to whom this rare jawbone once belonged
was clearly a human. Dr. Schoetensack called him "homo
heidelbergensis," Heidelberg Man. Two unusual things appeared in this
jawbone: the very wide and primitive rear bone and the lack of a pointed
chin. What can be concluded from that? - The primitive bone reveal that
the whole face was primitive. The man from Mauer would also have had a
somewhat differently formed mouth cavity than we do. The making of many
sounds, especially consonants, must have been difficult for him. He would
thus not have had a highly developed language.
When did the man from Mauer live? Scholars have not quite been able to
agree. It is estimated that the age of the mandible is about a half million
years! How can a bone survive for such a long time? That is explained
by fact that the sand in which it was embedded contained a great deal
of lime.
The animals whose remains were found near Mauer were for the most part
contemporaries of our homo heidelbergensis. Whether he was in a position
to hunt them is hard to say. The man from Mauer would have been satisfied
with lesser wildlife. Berries and forest plants would have been his general
meal.
Our homeland at that time was covered with sparse mixed woods. The bone
remains of Mauer betrays that to us, especially the teeth of the elephant
and the rhinoceros. The molars are suited for chewing foliage, but not
steppe grass.
If there were woods, it could not have been cold. In the Ice Age, the
trees disappeared. The man from Mauer thus lived in one of the warm periods
that have occurred several times in the last million years.
On 24 July 1933 there was, again in a gravel pit, another sensation-producing
discovery: near Steinheim on the river Murr, a tributary of the Neckar,
there was excavated the very well preserved skull
of an early human. Years of investigation began. The scientists worked
like detectives who had a difficult case to solve. Where did this skull
come from?
Today it is believed that it is the remains of a young woman who lived
250,000 or even 300,000 years ago. The bulges over the eyes revealed a
primitive appearance. But overall, this "homo steinheimensis" must have
been quite similar to the human of today. It is certain that he like the
man from Mauer lived during a warm period. That is revealed by the numerous
animal remains that were also found in the Steinheim gravel pit. Even
a water buffalo is among them, an animal that only lived in a very warm
climate.
It is lucky that we have the many caves of the Swabian Alb. They are the
most important discovery sites for life during the last Ice Age. Like
treasure hunters, researchers into prehistory push into this subterranean
world and carry out countless digs. They have truly brought treasures
to light.
There have indeed not been many human remains discovered so far. Professor
Riek made an important find in July 1931: in the Vogelherd cave (near
Stetten in the Lon valley in Heidenheim county) he dug up a skull with
mandible but without a face, also an upper arm bone, two lumbar vertebrae
and a metacarpal bone. He named this find "Stetten
I." Then there appeared a second, less well preserved skull that Riek
designated "Stetten II."
The two persons from whom these remains came appear not to have belonged
to the same time. "Stetten I," it is believed, could have lived about
30,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. No doubt, in terms of his appearance,
this man was very close to today's people and he was markedly different
from the bipeds that inhabited southern Germany and many other parts of
Europe 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 years before him: the famous Neanderthals.
The chin of the Stetten man is pointed like ours; there are no bulges
over his eyes. That he was intellectually more advanced than his predecessor,
the Neanderthal, is shown by his weapons and his tools.
He understood how to make spear points out of bone fragments: he worked
the ivory of mammoth tusks, and he honed extraordinarily fine knives and
blades from hard stone. The scientists named him Aurignac Man. Here we
will call him simply Ice Age Hunter.
In the Vogelherd cave, this treasury of prehistory, there were found quite
different things: small animal figures of ivory, only five to seven centimeters
(2 to 2 ¾ inches) long. A charming wild pony is among them, a mammoth,
a cave lion. They are among the oldest works of art in the world: then
previously Man in the southwestern area had evidently not attempted to
depict living things. Where our skilled Ice Age Hunter came from, is not
known. One may nevertheless not assume that the Ice Age Hunters lived
in caves the year around. They would perhaps have established their camp
in the summer on a lake and lived from fishing. Certainly they knew exactly
when the best time was to hunt reindeer, deer and ibex. They also did
not avoid the mammoth. It is assumed that they constructed pitfalls for
the giant beasts, a difficult job for people who did not have iron picks,
spades and shovels available.
They would have hunted bear not only for the meat, but also for the warm
fur. They lived in the Ice Age; they needed clothing.
Whoever visits these archaeological sites, perhaps the caves in the Swabian
Alb, should not forget that the terrain during the Ice Age looked quite
different. When our man from the Vogelherd cave climbed the mountain,
he saw to the south the immense ice fields of the Alpine glacier glistening.
The mountain peaks themselves were quite bare. Below, in the valley, dwarf
birches and stunted Scots pines stooped. A raw land! And even so, there
lived here an animal world of rich variety. Enough grasses and herbs grew
to nourish the mammoth, wild horse, reindeer, and other plant eaters,
and lions and tigers also lived from them - and not least, Man.
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