The Lake-Dwellings of Europe: Being the Rhind Lectures in Archæology for 1888Munro, Robert
History
The Lake-Dwellings of Europe: Being the Rhind Lectures in Archæology for 1888
Munro, Robert
Lake-dwellers and lake-dwellings -- Bibliography; Lake-dwellers and lake-dwellings -- Europe
Among the objects of archæological value collected were the
following:--Portion of a human skull, and various bones of the horse,
urus, ox, stag, goat, dog, pig, beaver, and the humerus of a bird. The
industrial relics consisted of various kinds of implements and weapons
of bone and staghorn, as harpoons, perforated clubs, daggers, etc., of
which a few are here represented (=Fig. 94=). As these illustrations
are merely copied from Ubaghs' work, and are not drawn to scale, I
give the respective lengths of the objects, viz. (1) 15½, (2) 10, (3)
6½, (4) 13½, (5) 4¾, (6) 3, and (7) 3½ inches.
No complete skeleton of any animal was found, because, as Mr. Ubaghs
remarks, these hunters only carried certain portions of the dead
animals to their abodes. It was also observed that the spongy portions
of the bones had been gnawed away, probably by dogs.
To the portion of the human skull (_dolichocephalic_) there is now
more than ordinary interest attached, as it was near the same spot
that Professor Crahay discovered the celebrated human jaw known as the
"Smeermaas mâchoire," and subsequently described by Sir Charles Lyell
in his "Antiquity of Man" as coeval with a mammoth tusk found in the
vicinity. The present skull was found 11 to 13 feet below the surface,
lying upon the gravel bed on which the wooden structures reposed. From
a careful comparison of it with the "Crahay jaw," now in the cabinet
of anatomy in the University of Leyden, Mr. Ubaghs found that the
two relics were identical as to patina, consistency of bone, and the
composition of the material in which they were embedded (traces of
which still adhered to them), and he comes to the prosaic conclusion
that the two belonged to the Maestricht crannog: "Cette mâchoire,
ainsi que les autres ossements de la même provenance, ont appartenu à
notre station lacustre près de Maestricht."
[Illustration: =Fig. 94.=--MAESTRICHT.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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