Open caves
| Open caves
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|---|---|---|
 Large open cave |
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| Location: | Nordlingen | |
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Geographic location: |
48 ° 49 '6.6 " N , 10 ° 27' 1.1" E | |
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| Cadastral number: | M 7 / M 8 | |
The Ofnet caves are natural karst caves near Holheim , a district of the Swabian city of Nördlingen in the Donau-Ries district in Bavaria .
The origin of the term "Ofnet" is not proven.
They are the remains of an underground karst system at the edge of the Nördlinger Ries crater . You are on the south-western part of the almost two-kilometer-long Riegelberg - a limestone ridge that is also known as the “Kingdom of Heaven”. Archaeological finds indicate that the caves were inhabited from the Middle Paleolithic to the Mesolithic . The Ofnet caves gained supraregional importance when Stone Age skull burials were discovered in 1908 .
The Ofnet caves, which lie in the transition area from the Nördlinger Ries to the Riesalb belonging to the Swabian Alb , are registered in the Franconian Alb cave cadastre (HFA) as M 7 (Large Ofnet Cave) and M 8 (Small Ofnet Cave). The caves including the surrounding area (a total of approx. 8 hectares) are also classified as the “Ofnethöhlen bei Holheim” nature reserve . They are freely accessible.
description
Great ofnet
The Große Ofnet, located at 520 meters above sea level, is 55 meters long. Originally the entrance to the Große Ofnet was smaller, it got its current size when the excavator Robert Rudolf Schmidt detonated it: it is four meters high and six meters wide. Short side branches branch off to the left and right of the eight meter long, eight meter wide and nine meter high entrance hall, both of which lead to the surface.
Small Ofnet
The Kleine Ofnet lies at 525 meters above sea level, a few meters above the Große Ofnet, near the top of the ridge. It has only one accessible room that is twelve meters long, seven meters wide and three meters high.
Archaeological excavations
The Stuttgart pastor and geologist Oscar Fraas systematically examined the Ofnet caves for the first time between 1875 and 1876. He discovered stone tools and animal bones, probably dating from 3000 to 5000 BC. Come from BC.
The Tübingen researcher Robert Rudolf Schmidt caused a sensation, who examined the Ofnet caves in 1901 and 1905, 1907 and 1908: Schmidt found two nests in the Great Ofnet, in which 33 human skulls lay. Ten of them were women's skulls, 19 were children's skulls and four were men's skulls. All skulls faced west. The nests in which the skulls lay were colored with red chalk. The female skulls were adorned with jewelry, including 215 deer teeth and 4250 shells of jewelry snails. All of the accessories were pierced and must originally have been strung into chains or nets.
Robert Rudolf Schmidt believed that the cranial burials represented a parallel to a similar-looking dumping of a human skull in the Mas d'Azil cave and accordingly classified the finds from the Ofnet in the Upper Magdalenian , which corresponded to the classification for Mas d'Azil at the time . New radiocarbon dating , however, revealed that the skulls are significantly younger and date from the Mesolithic around 7700 BC. Come from BC. Because Schmidt also found the lower jaw and cervical vertebrae in the nests, it can be assumed that the heads were carried skin and hair into the cave after they had previously been separated from the torso.
It cannot be determined whether beheading was the cause of death of the 33 people. Unhealed skull injuries indicate a violent death, but they could also have been inflicted on the body after death.
Anthropologists like David W. Frayer from the University of Kansas assume a warlike massacre in the Ofnet Caves. Other theories speak of ritual sacrifice or cannibalism . The injuries also indicate a form of skull cult.
Most recently, the pharmacist and local researcher Ernst Frickhinger and the archaeologist Ferdinand Birkner dug in the Ofnet caves for prehistoric finds in 1934 and 1936.
Geotope
The caves are designated by the Bavarian State Office for the Environment (LfU) as a geoscientifically valuable geotope (geotope number: 779H001). It was also awarded the official seal of approval for Bavaria's most beautiful geotopes by the LfU .
Others
The US astronauts from the Apollo 14 and Apollo 17 missions visited the Ofnet caves as part of their geological field training in the Nördlinger Ries.
literature
- Ernst Frickhinger : The kingdom of heaven with the Ofnet caves near Hohlheim im Ries. In: Our Swabia. Vol. 15, No. 6, 1939, ZDB -ID 511748-3 , pp. 104-108.
- Jörg Orschiedt : Ofnet. In: Jörg Orschiedt: Manipulation of human skeletal remains. Taphonomic processes, secondary burials or cannibalism? (= Prehistoric material booklets. 13). Mo-Vince, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-9804834-7-9 , pp. 136–151, (also: Tübingen, Universität, Dissertation, 1996).
- Helmut Seitz: Visit to the Underworld, The Crypt of 33 Skulls. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . No. 180, August 6, 1991.
- Gerhard Stein: On the history and findings of the excavations in the caves Große and Kleine Ofnet near Nördlingen. In: Annual report of the Rhein-Main cave research group. 12, 1990 (1991), ISSN 1613-7019 , pp 228-232.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Robert Rudolf Schmidt : The late Palaeolithic burials of the Ofnet. In: Mannus . Supplementary volume. Vol. 1, 1909 (1910), pp. 56-63.
- ^ Government of Swabia, NSG Ofnethöhlen near Holheim (accessed January 30, 2013)
- ↑ Jörg Orschiedt: Results of a new investigation of the late Mesolithic head burials from southern Germany. In: Nicholas J. Conard , Claus-Joachim Kind (ed.): Current research on the Mesolithic. = Current Mesolithic Research (= Urgeschichtliche Materialhefte. 12). Mo-Vince, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-9804834-4-4 , pp. 147-160.
- ^ Jörg Orschiedt: Ofnet. In: Jörg Orschiedt: Manipulation of human skeletal remains. Taphonomic processes, secondary burials or cannibalism? (= Prehistoric material booklets. 13). 1999, pp. 136-151.
- ↑ a b Yuval Noah Harari : A Brief History of Humanity. Penguin Books, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-328-10287-8 , pp. 84–85.
- ↑ Dirk Husemann: How man invented war. Spiegel Online, May 28, 2006.
- ^ Bavarian State Office for the Environment, Geotop Ofnethöhlen SW von Holheim (accessed on November 21, 2017).
- ↑ Bavaria's most beautiful geotopes, Ofnet caves (accessed on November 21, 2017)
