Mammoth hunters Maška and Absolon

The first humans came to Europe already 1.4 million years ago but until the 19th century people absolutely refused to admit any existence of prehistory. It wasn't until the mid-19th century century there were significant finds of stone tools, bones of unknownand cave paintings and unquestionable evidence of prehistoric man. Under the weight of these important discoveries, 1859 becomes "Year 0" in prehistory research. Prehistoric stone tools are recognized, unknown animal species are studied from skeletal remains, and what is more, Darwin's famous work on the origin of species is published in November 1859. Thus prehistory, archaeology and modern evolutionary biology are brought together.

The first recognized archaeological finds in our territory occur just a few years after the officially recognized year 0, in 1880. The Czech teacher and archaeological researcher Karel Jaromír Maška discovered a fragment of the lower jaw of a Neanderthal child in the Šipka cave in Štramberk on 26 August 1880. The jaw was lying in the ashes of an ancient hearth 1.4 metres below the surface. A large number of animal remains and stone tools made of local hornblende and flint were also discovered at the site. The discovery was unique in that the jawbone was the only direct remains of Neanderthal man on Czech territory. The discovery of the jawbone and the associated finds of stone tools can be dated back to the Middle Palaeolithic and was the first such significant find within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1881, Maška presented the Šipec jawbone at the International Anthropological Congress in Salzburg, where it gained widespread recognition and popularity and its discovery became a worldwide archaeological sensation. Today, this important archaeological find no longer exists. It was destroyed along with a number of other unique artefacts and collections in April 1945 when, at the end of World War II, theThe castle in Mikulov, where the most precious archaeological finds from the collections of the Moravian Museum were hidden, burned down in the Second World War. Today only casts of the found jawbone exist.

Another famous discovery by Mašek is clearly the discovery of the Skalka site in Předmostí near Přerov. In 1882 K. J. Maška unearthed 2 tons of animal bones (mammoth, bear, muskrat, rhinoceros and others) and a large number of stone tools and jewellery. At that time, animals traveled through the Moravian Gateway from Austria to Poland and back, and the uplands around the meandering Bečva River were an ideal place for Paleolithic people to observe the migration of animals and to live.

However, it wasn't until Mashko's discovery of a mass grave of 18 prehistoric people, covered with mammoth blades, that the world's archaeology textbooks entered the mainstream. Experts later discovered that this was a separate evolutionary species of human, which was given the name Homo Predmostensis. The find proves that Moravia was the centre of the continent in its time and that mammoths and humans lived side by side 25,000 years ago. Together with Dolní Věstonice, it is the most important archaeological site not only in our country but in Europe in general, and Maška became one of the founders of modern Czech archaeology

And here we slowly come to the world's most famous site and Karel Absolon.

Karel Vítězslav Absolon was a Moravian karst explorer, zoologist and geographer, but also a junior Moravian road cycling champion. He studied zoology and in 1907 he joined the Moravian Museum in Brno as a curator of zoological collections. In 1918 he began to deal with the Palaeolithic and led research on the collection of cave insects in the Sloupské Caves in the Moravian Karst.

However, archaeology was certainly not an unknown quantity for him, as he was the grandson of the renowned archaeologist Jindřich Wankel. The decisive impulse in his development towards archaeology was a letter from the Viennese professor J. Bayer, who pointed out the discovery of mammoth bones and white patinated flint during the widening of the road in Dolní Věstonice. Absolon immediately grasped the opportunity to build on the famous discoveries of his predecessors and make a name for himself worldwide.

The first systematic archaeological excavation of the Palaeolithic sites below the Pavlov Hills began under the direction of Karel Absolon in 1924. Věstonice, unlike Předmostí, was fortunate in that it was investigated later. At that time, the Předmostí was already almost destroyed by the extraction of sphagnum for the production of bricks in the brickyards that were gradually built on the site from the middle of the 19th century. century.

Absolon in Věstonice used progressive methods of research in larger areas, uncovered unique settlement situations, glassmammoth bone fragments, hearths, and a whole series of decorative and artistic objects, some of which were fired from clay. On 13. July 1925, the remains of a large hearth in the upper part of theof the prehistoric site, a statue of a naked woman made of baked clay is discovered. The statuette dates from the Early Palaeolithic and dates from 29 000-25 000 years BC. Absalom was not present at the actual discovery, although he is usually credited as the discoverer. The figurine was found by the worker Josef Seidl and the technical leader of the excavations, Emanuel Dania. In the remains of a prehistoric hearth about 10 m in diameter, the statuette lay together with stone tools and animal bones.

The statuette, known as the Venus of Věstonice, has become an important archaeological artefact worldwide, and Dolní Věstonice is best knownand Karel Absolon one of the greatest figures of European archaeology in the first half of the 20th century. The most famous archaeologist of the 20th century.

Both Maška and Absolon were true modern mammoth hunters on an academic level. But on a literary level, it was definitely Eduard Štorch who entered the heart of perhaps every boy with a thirst for knowledge with his novel The Mammoth Hunters.His historical novel is set in the earlier Stone Age on the territory of the Czech state. It describes the wanderings of a prehistoric hunting party from their headquarters on the banks of the river Dyje near the present-day Dolní Věstonice to Libeň in the territory of today's capital city of Prague.

It was Eduard Štorch and his novel that brought me to history. I first read The Mammoth Hunters when I was about eight years old, and at the age of ten I was given the Big Picture Atlas of Prehistoric Man by an attentive Santa Claus. I was literally captivated by the study of prehistoric man and this stage of history, and my thoughts often toyed with the idea of discovering new sites like that of Karel Absolon, whose statue from Vestonice I knew in detail from the atlas of prehistoric man. The Venus of Věstonice sits on my desk, I received a copy of it from my daughter, but instead of archaeological sites I am discovering something completely different. Or at least I wrote this article, at the beginning of the new year, for fun.