392 QUATEENARY HUMAN REMAINS IN CENTRAL EUROPE. 



THE SKUIX OF CANNSTATT. 



The derivation of the '' skull of Cannstatt *" (near Stuttgart) is 

 wholly obscure. In ITOO Duke Eberhard-Louis of Wurtemberg 

 caused explorations to be made in an oppidum near Cannstatt, which 

 resulted in the discovery of many objects of Roman origin. At the 

 base of the deposits were encountered bones of quaternary mammals, 

 particularly Vrsus spelmus, Elephas primigenius, and Hyrena spelcea. 

 These bones were transported to the Cabinet of Natural History at 

 Stuttgart, where they excited the highest interest and became the 

 object of a series of publications. Dr. Solomon Ressel, aulic physi- 

 cian and a good osteologist, wrote the first report of the exj^lorations 

 (published in the year of the discovery), and in this he insists on the 

 comjDlete absence of the remains of man, which he searched for with 

 care. The second scientific man Avho speaks of the Cannstatt finds. 

 Doctor Spleissius, declares equally that no hmnan bone has been 

 recovered. Nor are later reports from the eighteenth century any less 

 negative on this point. Finally, another court physician, Albert 

 Gessner, affirms twice, in 1749 and 175.3, that the Cannstatt excava- 

 tions yielded no remains of man. 



In the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, Cuvier 

 already kncAv of a human lower jaAv. But he writes in 1812: 



It is known that the ground was liandled without precaution and that there 

 is no knowledge as to the level at which eaeli ol)ject was discovered. 



It is not until 1835, hence one hundred and thirty-five years after 

 the explorations, that the paleontologist F. Jaeger declares that in 

 one of the glass cases of the Stuttgart Museum he came across a por- 

 tion of a human skull lying next to some Roman vases gathered in 

 1700. Without describing the skull, he si3eaks of it, on the mere evi- 

 dence of this relation with objects of other class, as having been foiuid 

 in the Cannstatt excavations made under the orders of the Duke 

 Eberhard-Louis. 



To the earlier reports on the subject should be added the conclu- 

 sion of cle Hoelder, who is absolutely certain that the skull was not 

 found during the explorations of 1700. No one knows where it comes 

 from, or when it was placed in the case. It may not be without interest 

 to state here that later there was found at Cannstatt, in the vicinity of 

 Uffkirche and near the locality where the excavations were carried 

 on in 1700, a Roman cemetery from the early part of the middle 

 ages, while in 1816 there was imearthed in the same neighborhood a 

 tomb with a collective neolithic burial. This tomb was in the tufa 

 and was decorated with fossil tusks of the mammoth. It is easy to 

 see that one may attribute to the skull posing as that of Cannstatt 

 almost any origin he desires. 



