Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/230

170 bones and other relics. This was successfully carried out, a couple of months later, by Mr Alex. Makowsky. A pit, ultimately covering an area of 8 square metres, was dug at the place indicated near the canal basin, and at a depth of 4.50 metres they encountered a layer of loess of a reddish colour. Up to this point nothing had been observed to indicate that the superjacent deposits had been previously disturbed. In this reddish deposit they found a mammoth's tusk, 1 metre in P.170-fig.53-Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.jpg FIG. 53. Disc made of Mammoth Tusk (⅔). length, and about the thickness of a man's arm ; but it was so friable, owing to decay, that it could only be abstracted in fragments. Immediately underneath the tusk lay an almost entire shoulder-blade of a mammoth, and close to it the skull and some of the upper trunkbones of a human skeleton. It was only then ascertained that the rest of the skeleton had been removed some weeks earlier, when the canal was being excavated. Incidentally a workman trampled on the skeleton, and so damaged the jaw-bones and the anterior portion of the right side of the skull. Within the radius of a metre from the human skeleton there were found the skull and some ribs of a rhinoceros, a few teeth of the horse, and the following relics of man's handiwork :—

(1) Over 600 fragments of fossil tooth-shells (Dentalium badense), originally emanating from Tertiary deposits, some 10 or 15 kilometres south of Brünn, which were supposed to have been used as a necklet, or some kind of head ornament.

(2) Two discs of limestone (14 centimetres and 15 centimetres in diameter), perforated in the centre by a large circular hole. Also sixteen smaller discs (from 3.5 centimetres to 6 centimetres in diameter), five made of stone, three of bone (ribs of rhinoceros), and eight of ivory. Some of these discs were perforated in the centre ; and others were ornamented with marginal notches and grooves running from the centre to the circumference (Fig. 53).