Page:Excavations at the Kesslerloch.djvu/41

Rh chronologically at the end of the second and the beginning of the third period of the stone age.

A considerable and striking difference, however, is found if we compare the fauna of the lake-dwellings with that of the Kesslerloch. The whole of the animals which belong to a cold climate are wanting in the lake-dwellings; we find neither the reindeer nor the mammoth, the rhinoceros, the lion, nor even the lynx, the cave-bear, the brown bear, the glutton, the Arctic fox, the marmot, the hare, nor the ptarmigan. But on the other hand, we find the red stag, the wild boar, and the elk, and of tame animals, the Bos taurus, the dog, the sheep, and the goat have now become regularly naturalised. These differences are evidently not merely to be ascribed to chance, but doubtless arise also from the alteration of climate. When men built their abodes in lakes and marshes, the climate was considerably milder, and the fauna consequently approached much nearer to that of our own time. The age of the Troglodytes consequently lies far beyond that of the lake-dwellers, although the fauna of the Kesslerloch shows some slight connection with that of the lake-dwellings by the presence of Bos primigenius, Bison priscus, and the red stag.

The difference between the fauna of Thayngen and that of the Danish shell-mounds is still greater; for that of the latter comes much nearer the modern fauna, nay, is almost identical with it. The Danish kitchen-middens are consequently of more recent date than the older lake-dwellings, and very much more recent than our cave remains.

It is most singular that not a single human bone has been found in the Kesslerloch, except one collar bone belonging to a young individual. It was certainly at one time given out to the world that the complete skeleton of a child had been found in the cave. This is decidedly true; but the reporter who says that he was an eye-witness when it was taken out of the ground does not appear to have noticed that this skeleton lay hardly two inches and a half below the surface of the upper covering, and consequently did not belong to the prehistoric age, but to the present. And here I will take the opportunity of mentioning a fact. I was informed by three men who worked for a time as labourers when the Baden Railway was made, that in the immediate neighbourhood of the Kesslerloch, when they were blasting the rock, a moderately large cave was exposed, within which a considerable number of human bones had been laid up. I made them show me this questionable place, but, in fact, I