342 



NA TURE 



[January 21, 1909 



PRIMITIVE MAN IN THE KESSLERLOCH.' 

 T^HAINGEN is known to most of us only as a 

 -'■ little station on the line from Schaffhausen to 



• 'on^tnnz. In the Jurassic limr.ifonf. th-it rUes nhovc 



Fig. I. — Excavations at the 



the village, there is, however, a famous cavern, which 

 in the last thirty years or so has added greatly to our 

 Iviiow ledge of Palaeolithic man. 



The Kesslerloch has suffered by being somewhat too 

 accessible. It is even visible from the railway em- 

 bankment, and has attracted workers, discreet and 

 indiscreet, from several of the adjacent towns. We 

 owe to Konrad Merk, a schoolmaster in Thaingen, 

 the recognition of the cave as a place where pre- 

 historic records might be found. In December, 1873, 

 Merk and a friend named Wepf began their excava- 

 tions in frozen soil. Wepf took a number of worked 

 flints and a carving in reindeer-horn to Prof. A. 

 Heim, in Ziirich. On January 6, 1874, Heim himself 

 visited the cave, and found the beautiful incised 

 drawing of the grazing reindeer, which is now so 

 well known through many reproductions. 



The present handsome memoir brings together the 

 discoveries made from time to time, including those of 

 Dr. J. Niiesch in 189S and iSqg; but it deals especially 

 with the systematic excavations organised (p. 27) by 

 the .Schweizerische naturforschende Gesellschaft 'and 

 the Historisch-antiquarischer Verein of Schaffhausen 

 in 1902 and 1903. Dr. Heierli, of Ziirich, was ap- 

 pointed as director, and a very complete investigation 

 has been carried out. Merk published his results in 

 1875. and an English translation appeared in the 

 following year in London. Drawings of a bear and a 

 sitting fox, incised on bone, were included among the 

 objects found in the detrital heaps, and the originals 

 are now in the British Museum. They are again 

 figured in the present memoir (plate xxix.) as a 

 warning to collectors. The true drawings made by 

 Palaeolithic man at Thaingen are worked on polished 

 reindeer-horn, or rarely on jet (p. Iq6); and the bear 

 and fox are certainly in another style of art. Linden- 

 schmit, director of a museum in Mainz, and well 

 acquainted with prehistoric art, soon pointed out that 

 the bear and fox were copied from a book for children 

 th.'it had appeared in 186S. Forthwith a judicial 



1 " Das Kesslerloch bsi Thaing-n." By Dr. J. Heieili, with the co- 

 operation of other authors. Pp. vi+214 ; with 32 plates. (Zurich : Neue 

 Denkschriften der schweizerischen naturforschenden Gesellschaft, Band 

 ;iliii., 1907) 



NO. 2047, VOL. 79] 



inquiry succeeded in tracing the fraud to an artful 

 workinan and an innocent schoolboy ; but for a time 

 suspicion fell upon other and far superior specimens. 

 Heim, however, who is here quoted in full, proved his 

 case for the reindeer ; a pig that 

 had somehow got figured with a 

 curly tail was shown to have a 

 most proper and straight one in the 

 original; and the carved head of a 

 musk-ox, one of the most valuable 

 relics (plate xxxii.), has proved 

 especially convincing. In fact, onlv 

 three forgeries are now recognised, 

 thanlis to the very searching criti- 

 cism which each object has under- 

 gone. On plate xxxii., by the by, 

 the numbers 5 and 6 should be inter- 

 clianged. 



Dr. Heierli 's own excavations 

 were in the yellow loam, which 

 must have accumulated during the 

 epoch of the occupation of the cave 

 by man (p. 60). The hearths in 

 this show that successive groups of 

 settlers caine in, but all the remains 

 are classed as Palaeolithic, and 

 mostly as Magdalenian. There are 

 " signs of climatic alteration 

 I luring this epoch (p. 213); but the 

 water-level in the loam has now 

 climbed some four metres higher 

 than when the cave was first inhabited. The loam 

 is regarded by Prof. Meister as accuniul;Uing, partlv 



Fig. 2.— Incised drawings 

 two lower photographs 

 the horn are brought inl 



