Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and ArtOsborn, Henry Fairfield
History
Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and Art
Osborn, Henry Fairfield
Art, Primitive; Prehistoric peoples; Stone age
In the first cold moist period the full wave of arctic tundra life
appeared in the whole region between the Alpine and Scandinavian glaciers
during the renewed descent of the ice-fields; this was the tundra stage of
early Magdalenian times, accompanying the _Bühl_ advance. At the stations
of Thaingen, Schweizersbild, Kastlhäng, and Niedernau, appears the
musk-ox, together with the woolly mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and the
reindeer. The discovery of the grotto of Kastlhäng, a reindeer hunting
station in the Altmühltale of Bavaria(6) fills out what has long been a
gap in the geographic distribution of the early Magdalenian. The principal
objects of the chase here were the reindeer, the wild horse, the arctic
hare, and the ptarmigan; the royal stag is very rare, and the bison is
wanting entirely; a strong arctic character is given to the fauna by the
presence of the banded lemming, the arctic wolverene, and the arctic fox.
From this region the musk-ox migrated far to the southwest, reaching the
northern slopes of the Pyrenees. At the same time the arctic grouse, the
whistling swan, and other northern birds entered the region of the Rhine
and the Danube. But the surest indicators of a cold tundra climate
prevailing during the period of the _Bühl_ advance are the banded lemming
(_Myodes torquatus_) and the Obi lemming (_Myodes obensis_), which are
found in the same deposits with the arctic hare, the reindeer, and the
woolly mammoth mixed with the implements of the early Magdalenian industry
at the stations of Sirgenstein, Wildscheuer, and Ofnet along the upper and
middle Danube. There also appear the ermine and the arctic wolverene; in
fact, almost all the characteristic forms of tundra life except the
polar bear, which only enters the northern tundras in the summer season.
[Illustration: FIG. 185. Characteristic forms of alpine life, which
descended from the mountains or migrated from the highlands of western
Asia in Aurignacian and Magdalenian times: the ibex, the chamois, the
alpine ptarmigan, the argali sheep, and the (_A_) alpine vole, all shown
one-twenty-fifth life size; and the (_A_) alpine vole also one-fifth life
size.]
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