ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN EUROPE—MACCURDY. 569 
and classic Greek, Latin and Lydian. Discoveries of the past few 
years have added appreciably to our knowledge of the Asylian. 
One of these at Ofnet (Bavaria) will be discussed in the following 
chapter. ; 
HUMAN REMAINS. 
The decade has witnessed the discoveries of skeletal remains of man 
that have added much to our knowledge of the races inhabiting 
Europe during the Quaternary. Because of the stratigraphic posi- 
tion in which it was found and of its somatological characters, the 
human lower jaw discovered by Dr. Otto Schoetensack* on October 
91, 1907, in a sandpit near the village of Mauer, 10 kilometers south- 
east of Heidelberg, ranks as the most important single specimen. 
Mauer lies in the valley of the Elsenz, a tributary of the Necker. The 
human lower jaw was found in situ in the so-called Mauer sands, at a 
depth of 24.10 meters and 0.87 meter from the bottom of the deposit. 
The first 10.92 meters at the top of the sections are composed of loess, 
which is classed as upper Quaternary, while the Mauer sands forming 
the rest of the section are lower Quaternary. The loess itself repre- 
sents two distinct periods, an older and a younger. 
The horizon (fig. 19) from which the human lower jaw came has 
furnished other mammalian remains, including Felis spelewa, Felis 
catus, Canis, Ursus arvernensis, Sus scrofa var. priscus, Cervus lati- 
frons, Bison, Castor fiber, Equus, Rhinoceros etruscus, and E'lephas 
antiquus. 
Schoetensack likens the fossil mammalian fauna of the Mauer sands 
to the preglacial Forest beds of Norfolk and the upper Pliocene of 
southern Europe. This is particularly true of Rhinoceros etruscus, 
and the horse of Mauer, which is a transition form between Hquus 
stenonis coccht and the horse of Taubach, both of which may be 
referred definitely to the Phocene. The rest of the mammalian fauna 
belongs to the lower Quaternary. 
The coexistence of man with Hlephas antiquus at Taubach, near 
Weimar, gave Schoetensack special reasons for expecting to find 
human remains also at Mauer. The possibility of such a discovery 
had kept him in close touch for twenty years with the owner of the 
sandpit, Herr J. Résch. The discovery was made by one of the work- 
men, with whom at the time were another workman and a boy. 
Schoetensack was immediately informed, and arrived the following 
day. The lower jaw was intact, but the stroke of the workman’s 
“Der Unterkiefer des Homo Heidelbergensis aus den Sanden von Mauer bei 
Heidelberg: Ein Beitrag zur Paliiontologie des Menschen, von Otto Schoeten- 
sack. Mit 13 Tafeln, davon 10 in Lichtdruck. Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm 
Engelmann, 1908. sf 
