FOSSIL AND SUBFOSSIL HORSES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS. 403 
too, influenced by many reasons, have expressed my belief in the probability of 
a very early domestication of the horse, probably in the paleolithic age of Europe. 
But this has here no bearing. ‘The essential fact is, and remains, that the horse 
of Solutré—which may have been the same that was hunted and pictured by the 
cave-dwellers of Dordogne—was smaller than the steppe horse of Central Europe, 
and had a withers-height of about 125 cm. if one may judge from the skeleton 
of a Solutré horse preserved in Lyons. ‘To what is the smallness of this horse due? 
In giving my conclusions I shall attempt an explanation; here I will remark 
only that the climatic and physiographic conditions under which the Solutré 
horse of the paleolithic age lived were probably essentially different from those 
surrounding the steppe horses of the northern lowlands and coastal lands of Europe. 
THE HORSE OF PREHISTORIC (LATER QUATERNARY) TIMES. 
(a) The Neolithic Age.—Remains of horses of the neolithic age are rare; never- 
theless, finds from Wohontsch on the Biela, Leitmeritz, Fouvent, and Louverné 
are evidence that at least in Bohemia and Gaul the horse had not disappeared in 
neolithic time. 
More complete remains of the horse than merely a few bones of the extremities 
seem to have been found at Schussenried, of which Fraas* has unfortunately given 
a very imperfect account, and it was not possible to determine its geologic age. 
Here belong, however, still other finds: Boucher de Perthes found in 1833 at the 
bottom of a turbary in the Department of the Somme in France, 5 to 6 meters 
below the water-level, two skulls of horses associated with late neolithic pottery 
and with flint implements. These were deposited in the Museum in Paris; and 
one of the skulls was later examined by Sanson himself and determined as “ Asinus 
africanus or the African ass.” 
Sanson remarks concerning it on page 133, t. mI, of his ‘‘Zootechnie’’: ‘‘ En le 
donnant comme étant celui d’un cheval, Boucher de Perthes s’était done trompé, 
erreur bien excusable d’ailleurs, de la part d’un trés-habile archéologue tout 
a fait étranger 4 l’anatomie zoologique. Ce qu’importe, c’est que la présence 
de ce crane dans le nord des Gaules, a 1’époque de la pierre polie, atteste que sa 
race y avait été amenée dés lors par des migrations de population humaine.”’ 
Sanson considered this an isolated case, but a no less eminent authority than 
Ludwig Riitimeyer described an equid skull from a pile-dwelling at Auvernier 
on Lake Bienne, which he ascribed to an ass.f 
Since, through the kindness of Professor E. Ray Lancaster and Oldfield 
Thomas, I was able to compare this African ass, so early an inhabitant of Europe, 
with its contemporary from the ruins of Abadieh near Kenia in Egypt, dating 
according to Professor Flinders Petrie from the IV dynasty, I came to doubt the 
correctness of the determination of the two authorities—Rtitimeyer and Sanson. 
Riitimeyer (p. 53), as well as Sanson, was led to its determination as Equus 
asinus, or the half-ass, on account of the small absolute size of the skull. But 
the greater extent of the diastema or toothless ridge of the jaws than is usual 


*O. Fraas, Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte, etc. Arch. f. Anthrop., v, 1872. 
}Riitimeyer. Schadel von Esel u. von Rind aus den Pfahlbauten von Auvernier u. Sutz Pfahlbauten. 
vi. Bericht. Mitt. d. antiq. Gesellsch. Ziirich, Bd. xrx, pp. 50-56, 1876. 
