国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

THE SKULL OP THE PREHISTORIC HORSES.   41 I

The horse of the La Tene period remains, however, till still later times, as is shown by a skull from an Alemannic grave at Königsfelden near Vindonissa. After this review of the most important finds at our disposal of remains of horses, dating from different periods, we may attempt to compare these finds with each other and with the Anau horse, which, with the horses of the Quaternary epoch and that of the paleolithic age at Solutré, ranks oldest among the horses we have considered.

THE SKULL OF THE PREHISTORIC HORSES.
THE TEETH.

The incisors of both jaws are abundantly represented in the collection before me. Still, notwithstanding the opinion of Wilckens,* I do not believe that their characteristics will be of value in classifying races and species; the phenomena of their growth and abrasion are sufficiently well-known and are widely used in determining age.

Although Salenskit says that Equus przewalskii has larger teeth than any other horse, this may be inconclusive, since this characteristic is essentially dependent on the age of the animal. Moreover, I have not been able to find out whether Salenski had in mind the whole length of a tooth or measured only the chewing surface. Indeed, it seems from the size of the dimensions that by length Salenski meant the projection of the tooth out of the alveola and called the length of the chewing surface " width." The value of such measurements is naturally problematic, since with age the incisors can project from I to 7 cm., and especially since we do not know from Salenski exactly how old (according to the teeth) were the animals in question.

More important than the size of the teeth is the width of the intermaxillary, which gives the means of determining the width of muzzle of the living animal.

From Anau, however, we have some specimens in which the intermaxillary can not be measured because the teeth are broken off. I will use here, for comparison with those from other localities, better preserved specimens of lower jaws.

Dimensions of corpus of lower jaw (in millimeters).

* M. Wilckens, Beiträge f. Kenntniss des Pferdegebiss, etc. Halle, 1888. Nova Acta, K. Leop.-Carol deutsch. Akad. d. Naturf.

top. cit., p. 48.

Greatest width.

Width at
foramen
mentale.

Height of corpus.

Diastema from incisors to canines.

Anau horse   

Diluvial horse after Nehring, upper jaw   

Diluvial or paleolithic, Schellenken, upper jaw,

   male, 12 years   

Hostomitz, male, 9 years   

Gross Czernosek, male, 8 years   

Liebshausen (La Tène), male, 14 years   

Gross Czernosek (Rasch), 1 o years   

Lignitz, neolithic   

Auvernier .    

Alemannic horse, Koenigsfelden   

32

28

84

67 62 62 64 56

6o

61

24

25

29

23

27

40

35

35

43

40

377

3

18

18 Io 5 9