The following is my translation of an article called: Ein neues vorgeschichtliches Rätsel von Dr Ludwig Hopf, Stuttgart. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1909, Heft 3, Seiten 83-85. As would be expected after a century, some of the discussion is well past its sell-by date. I'm not aware of any previous translation.
Trevor Dykes.

A new prehistoric puzzle by Dr Ludwig Hopf, Stuttgart

If we take a look back from the present to the middle third of the previous century, then we are surprised to have attained, during this relatively short period of time as compared to earlier centuries, such a good picture of prehistoric people, especially from Diluvian times (the Paleolithic). We have learned to differentiate between, working backwards, Homo primigenius of Neanderthal, Spy, Krapina and so on, the even more primitive Homo mousteriensis and heidelbergensis and, as a semi-animal ancestor of ape people from Java, Pithecanthropus erectus. We see the tall-grown people of Cro Magnon and La Madeleine in France as descendants of Homo primigenius and, as humans from the transition from the older and younger Stone Age, we finally have ones from southern France (Mas d'Azil) and North Europe (Kjökkenmöddinger).

If we want to feel proud, then we could certainly be satisfied with the number of finds from excavations filling our museums, and with the very wide literature on prehistory from all countries of Europe and America. The anatomical conditions of bones of Paleolithic people have been recorded by numerous precise measurements. Thousands of weapons, tools and implements of stone, bone and horn have come to hand, and the methods of production have been analysed. We know that paleolithic (Old Stone Age) humans did not only live in caves, but rather sometimes in self-built huts in the open. Animal bones found from the same time as artefacts (products of human culture) provide us with a picture of the then animal world with which the people lived and hunted. We also do not wonder that the fire pits of Homo primgenius contain roasted flesh from butchered humans, and can assume with reasonable certainty that the first stirrings of religious awareness occurred after the Paleolithic as animalism (spiritual cults), fetishism (honouring of objects) and idolatry (worship of images).

We all know this, but there is much that we do not know about Diluvian people and, as it presently appears, never will know! Can we make a picture of the appearance, of the face of these people? No, then the primitive contour sketches on reindeer antlers from the period of La Madeleine (France) are much too thin and vague. We have no idea of the colour and nature of the hair, and less about the spread and thickness of body hair, and we can only assume that the people then wore furs, because of a lack of body hair, on the basis of the great number of scrapers discovered for processing animal skins. We have no information should we want to research social conditions under which they lived. Not even the so called Kommandostäbe ('commander staves') of reindeer antler, which were supposed to indicate the status of a chieftain, as they might obviously have served some purpose other than distinguishing a ruler. The same ignorance reigns with regards to the status of women and marriage customs, whether monogamous or polygamous or even, as assumed by Darwin and other researchers, communal marriages, meaning a mix of all females with all males. And finally even the language! From the size and strong development of the brain, we can conclude that paleolithic people already had a language, but what form it was in will forever remain a mystery, as these sounds are now dumb for all eternity, and there is not the quietest whisper of writing having existed.

It is as follows: riddle upon riddle! And now comes the latest riddle from Ofnet in Ries, an area between the Swabian and Franconian Jura in Bavarian-Swabia. The prodigious researcher, O Fraas, who also salvaged the prehistoric content of the Hohlfels, was already excavating in the Ofnet cave during the previous century and, along with many Diluvian animal remains (especially wild horses and reindeer) found human artefacts from flint, bones and horn which are characteristic of the Madeleine period. Subsequent excavations with similar results have not been lacking, but other than for "fragmentary skulls of three individuals" no human remains came to sight. How great then was the surprise when the young cave explorer, Dr Rob. Rud: Schmidt of Tübingen, as he was digging in a terrace by the cave entrance below a flat, heavy stone plate last year, discovered two burials of human skulls, and nothing of their like had been found elsewhere on the Earth previously. One thinks of a long, round grave with a layer of red ochre inside, 27 skulls arranged in a circle and then, 1m right from the large grave, a smaller one with 6 further ochre covered skulls, with the 5 smaller ones surrounding the larger. All skulls have the face directed to the west, each has the lower jaw, and some even 1-2 neck vertebrae, evidence that the skulls were not buried after decay but rather, they had been freshly and cleanly separated from the body along with the musculature and skin of lower jaw and neck bones, which were joined to the skull. Noteworthy is that only 6 of the 33 skulls are male, with the other 27 belonging to females or children. Most have suffered badly beneath the weight of the stone plate, but some have already been reconstructed, and there are hopes for the same occurring with further ones. As far as racial identity goes, of the 3 skulls viewed by this author, one was exceptionally long whereas the 2 others possessed a mixture of long and short features. According to the opinion of Hofrat Dr Schlitz (Heilbron), the owners of the skulls belonged partly to the so called Mediterranean race, partly to the short-headed race of Homo alpinus, and partly to a mixture of both races.- The male skulls were interred with neck strings made from Hirschgranen (Note: translation unknown to me, but something to do with a stag), a sign of early hunters, while the women and children had these too but along with lots of drilled houses of Planorbis multiformis, as also known from the Tertiary basin of Steinheim near Heidenheim (Württemburg) in their millions, and this is evidence that the tribe of Ofnet had already been in the vicinity of Steinheim, and it may later have become part of their territory.

How is this whole find to be explained? What is undoubtedly clear, is that this involves a tribe of people who were used to giving their dead a careful funeral. This is shown by the overall nature of the burial of the skulls, the covering of red ochre ("that they may blow red in the Blessed Land"), and the grave goods of decorative necklaces. As with the paleolithic residents of the Mas d'Azil cave in Southern France, this must show a prevailing belief in the existence of the soul after the death of the body and in a Blessed Land to the west, where "the sun goes to rest". What we absolutely do not know, is whether the burials took place at the same time or whether they followed one another over the course of time, although there is no particular evidence in favour of the latter possibility.

Should we assume that the first option is correct, then the question arises: How did the people die? Were they victims of a sudden plague? Or were they sacrifices in honour of a deceased tribal chieftain? Or are they, excepting for a few survivors, burials of a people who fell to the weapons of a rival tribe? The first of these three possibilities is very improbable for, from what is learned from primitive natural peoples of the present, in cases of mass deaths they leave the deceased unburied in huts, and flee as quickly as possible. That leaves us with the two other options having a certain degree of probability. Least likely is that a chieftain, at that time, should have enjoyed such a high level of respect, that so many of tribal compatriots should have accompanied him to the other side, especially given the low level of population. Much more probable is the third assumption, according to which the Ofnet people were attacked, resulting in heavy losses. But even this has problems such as the question: Where are the bodies? Do the charred human bones, found with remains of charcoal discovered near the skull burials, indicate the bodies were burned and, if yes, why burn the bodies and not the skulls?

We cannot get past this puzzle, and only a lucky find, perhaps with a similar burial along with clearer circumstances found elsewhere, could solve the riddle.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive
kosmostranslations.htm

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.