FRAGMENTS OF ICE AGE ENVIRONMENTS

Cave bear skeleton and wild boar skull from the cave of Mokriška jama

Dragan BOŽIČ

Molar (M2) in the jawbone of the skull on figure 4. Photo: Igor Lapajne.

Abstract

In the first part of the paper the author states that the cave of Mokriška jama, situated on the Mokrica mountain near Kamnik, was not discovered by the parish priest and amateur natural scientist Simon Robič in the second half of the 19th century, nor did he excavate there the cave bear skeleton which is on display in the Natural History Museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana. In fact, the cave was first visited by Henrik Freyer, the first curator of the Regional Museum for Carniola, already in 1837. Two years later, he made excavations there. With the collected cave bear bones he composed an incomplete cave bear skeleton, which was after the World War I completed with bones from other sites.

In the second part of the paper the author deals with a large skull found by Robič during his visit to the cave of Mokriška jama in 1877. In Robič’s opinion it belonged to a wild boar. According to its width of 24 cm and to other dimensions, quoted by Robiè, it only might have belonged to a cave bear, since the sculls of the wild boars are much narrower. The correctness of this conclusion is confirmed by a handwritten document dating from the year 1877, and preserved in the archives of the National Museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana.

Keywords:Slovenia, Mokriška jama, Pleistocene, cave bear, Henrik Freyer, wild boar, Simon Robič

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2011, (Opera Instituti Archaeologici Sloveniae, 21), 280 pages, 44 b-w photographs, 10 drawings, 52 tables, 71 graphs and 9 maps, 20 x 29 cm hardcover, ISBN 978-961-254-257-3.

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