Predmosti - archeological exploration 2006

Předmostí (Skalka) (often without

diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic ...

as Predmosti or Predmost), situated in the north western part of

Přerov Přerov (; german: Prerau) is a city in the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 41,000 inhabitants. It lies on the Bečva River. In the past it was a major crossroad in the heart of Moravia in the Czech Republic. The historic centre ...

Moravia Moravia ( , also , ; cs, Morava ; german: link=yes, Mähren ; pl, Morawy ; szl, Morawa; la, Moravia) is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic and one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. The me ...

near the city of

, is an important

Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of ...

hill site of Central Europe. A fossil site at Předmostí is located near

in the

country A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while the ...

of what is today the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

. The site was discovered in the late 19th century. Excavations were conducted between 1884 and 1930. As the original material was lost. The skeletal remains of the few dozen people from Předmostí are among the most important finds ever made of anatomically

modern humans Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...

, and are accompanied by items from the

Gravettian culture The Gravettian was an archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic that succeeded the Aurignacian circa 33,000 years BP. It is archaeologically the last European culture many consider unified, and had mostly disappeared by 2 ...

. A major restriction on the opportunities available for extracting information from this Upper Paleolitic population assembly, however, came with the irreparable damage done to the skeletal material during fire at

Mikulov Castle Mikulov Castle is a castle in the town of Mikulov in South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. The castle stands on a place of historic Slavonic settlement, where since the end of the 13th century the original stone castle was erected. The pr ...

near the end of the

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, which almost completely destroyed the entire collection. For many years, the only sources of scientific information relating to the assemblage available were the two-volume work by Jindřich Matiegka (1934 and 1938) and casts made of the skulls of individuals Předmostí 3 and Předmostí 4, and the endocrania of individuals Předmostí 3, 4, 9 and 10¹, in the collection of

Moravian Museum Moravian is the adjective form of the Czech Republic region of Moravia, and refers to people of ancestry from Moravia. Moravian may also refer to: * a member or adherent of the Moravian Church, one of the oldest Protestant denominations * Moravia ...

Brno Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic ...

. A fragment of Predmostí 21's mandible was rediscovered in the Museum of Olomouc. New excavations were conducted. The Předmostí site appears to have been a living area with associated burial ground with some 20 burials, including 15 complete human interments, and portions of five others, representing either disturbed or secondary burials.

Cannibalism Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, b ...

has been suggested to explain the apparent subsequent disturbance, though it is not widely accepted. The non-human fossils are mostly

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, ...

. Many of the bones are heavily charred, indicating they were cooked. Other remains include

fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

reindeer Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 subspe ...

, ice-age horse,

wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly u ...

, bear,

wolverine The wolverine (), (''Gulo gulo''; ''Gulo'' is Latin for "gluttony, glutton"), also referred to as the glutton, carcajou, or quickhatch (from East Cree, ''kwiihkwahaacheew''), is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae. It is ...

, and

hare Hares and jackrabbits are mammals belonging to the genus ''Lepus''. They are herbivores, and live solitarily or in pairs. They nest in slight depressions called forms, and their young are able to fend for themselves shortly after birth. The ge ...

. Remains of three dogs were also found, one of which had a

bone in its mouth. The Předmostí site is dated to between 24,000 and 37,000 years old. The people had robust features indicative of a big-game hunter lifestyle. They also share square eye socket openings found in the French material. Skulls of Předmostí individuals are significantly longer and more robust than of modern Europeans, with thick

brow ridge The brow ridge, or supraorbital ridge known as superciliary arch in medicine, is a bony ridge located above the eye sockets of all primates. In humans, the eyebrows are located on their lower margin. Structure The brow ridge is a nodule or crest ...

s, and

prognathism Prognathism, also called Habsburg jaw or Habsburgs' jaw primarily in the context of its prevalence amongst members of the House of Habsburg, is a positional relationship of the mandible or maxilla to the skeletal base where either of the jaws pr ...

, and show marked

sexual dimorphism Sexual dimorphism is the condition where the sexes of the same animal and/or plant species exhibit different morphological characteristics, particularly characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most ani ...

. They also display a degree of variability.

History of research

It was here that

Jindřich Wankel Jindřich Wankel (German: Heinrich Wankel; July 15, 1821, Prague – April 5, 1897, Olomouc) was a Bohemian palaeontologist and archaeologist. Wankel was born to Damian Wankel, a clerk, and his wife Magdalena, née Schwarz, in a bilingual envir ...

, and shortly afterwards K.J. Maška himself, conducted their

excavations In archaeology, excavation is the exposure, processing and recording of archaeological remains. An excavation site or "dig" is the area being studied. These locations range from one to several areas at a time during a project and can be condu ...

. Two years after the words above were written, the endeavours of K.J. Maška – an amateur archeologist with a professional approach-were crowned by the discovery of human bones on an unprecedented scale, together with the first find of a human lower jaw made by Wankel in 1884 and the later finds of M. Kříž (1886) and K. Absolon (1929), there were the fossil human remains discovered at Předmostí. Image:Privesek M.Kriz 1896.JPG, The Bond pendant Image:Pamatnik lovcu mamutu Predmosti.JPG, Memorial of hunters ''in situ'' Image:MZA, D9, MOR206918300, Przedmost - Zentrum.jpg, Old map of Předmostí (Predmost) 1830, earlier than research start Image:Cro-Magnon range 32,500 ybp.svg, Map of Cro-Magnon migration, stage -32 000.

References

Dolni Vestonice I – the Kiln and Encampment.
Don's Maps- Paleolithic European, Russian and Australian Archaeology. Ed. Don Hitchcock. *Jelínek, J., ''Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Evolution of Man'', Prague: Hamlyn (1975). *''

National Geographic Magazine ''National Geographic'' (formerly the ''National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as NAT GEO) is a popular American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. Known for its photojournalism, it is one of the most widely ...

'', The National Geographic Society, October 1988. *Price, T. D., and G. M. Feinman. Images of the past. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2010. Print. *Pringle, Heather. "Ice Age Communities May Be Earliest Known Net Hunters." Science Magazine 277.5300 (1997): 1203–204. Science. Web. Trinkaus, Erik, *Shreeve, James, ''The Neandertal Enigma: Solving the Mystery of Modern Human Origins'', New York: William Morrow and Company (1995). * Tedlock, Barbara, "The Woman in the Shaman's Body; Reclaiming the feminine in religion and medicine", New York: Bantam Dell, 2005.

History of research

References

Further reading