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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

342   ANIMAL REMAINS FROM THE EXCAVATIONS AT ANAU.

Culture II, with 1,30o bones, shows the following relative distribution : Equus, 25 per cent; Bos, 20 per cent; Ovis, 20 per cent; Sus, 15 per cent; Capra, 10 per cent; Camelus, 5 per cent; Canis II, 2 per cent; Antilope, 2 per cent; various wild animals, 1 per cent.

The same relation as in culture II holds good also for the South Kurgan and the mosque-shafts of the citadel of Anau, except that here the sheep and goat are more prominent, while cattle and pigs are diminished in importance.

The number of bones determined and numbered by me amounts to about 3,500, of which unfortunately only a relatively small percentage, about io per cent, are skull bones, about 17 per cent lower jaws and teeth; about 5 per cent are vertebrae and rump pieces and 71 per cent are hones from the extremities.

As regards the preservation of the bones, we find here the same conditions as among the European occurrences. The greater part of the bones have a light

yellow-brown color, though some from the very lowest layer, as for instance those

of the wild ox, the gazelle, the wolf, and the horse, show a dark red-brown color. There also occur some burnt bones from the period I b, which are calcined and

colored greenish-black. Some bones are distinguished further by a rich content

of saltpeter, which causes them continually to extract water from the atmosphere and remain in a constantly moist condition. The old fractures, which show the

same coloration as the surfaces of the hones, in contrast to the yellowish-white

color of fresh fractures, enable us to make certain observations concerning the way in which the Anau-li broke bones. But we must first mention a peculiarity of all

the light-colored bones—their high porosity and capillarity. If, for instance,

one takes the metacarpal or metatarsal bone of a horse, even as heavy as 200 grams, or a piece of any other bone with much substantia compacta, and touches

the tongue to a fresh fracture, the bone will hang on so firmly that it can be removed

only with difficulty; and a place so small as to be touched only with the point of the tongue is able to support a weight of 200 grams or more. This is a pecu-

liarity which I have found to exist to a similar extent only in the teeth of the fossilized Siberian mammoth, and it indicates a very great age for the bones of Anau.

The breaking of the bones was carried to a greater extent than among the neolithic Europeans; for while these last broke open only the tubular bones of

the horse, ox, deer, sheep, and pig, to suck out the marrow, and rarely the plate

bones, as the caps of the skulls, horn-cores, ribs, etc., this was always done by the prehistoric Anau-li. All bones were broken into several pieces and many still

show the distinct traces of sharp cutting instruments as well as of crushing teeth. The phalanx bones of the horse, ox, sheep, and pig escaped this fate, as did the horn-cores of the Gazella subgutturosa, of which the structure is too hard and the texture too compact to offer any temptation to break them open for marrow.

Little is to be seen here of a definite method of breaking bones, such as described by Rütimeyer for the dwellers in the Swiss pile-dwellings, and by me for the Germans of the Schlossberg, as the tubular bones and plate bones, lower jaws, and other cranial pieces are of an entirely different shape. Of the tubular