Karel Jaroslav Maška (in German his name appears as Karel Maschka while in some other languages his name appears as Charles Maska) was born on 28 August 1851 in Blansko, in southern Moravia, which at the time was part of the Austrian empire (today it is in the Czech Republic). He attended the parish school in Blansko and continued his studies at the then recently established Realschule in Brno (Brünn) from 1865 to 1870, where Gregor Mendel was one of his teachers. A Realschule is a German secondary school that emphasized science and mathematics, unlike the gymnasium, which emphasized a more traditional classical education. While a student in Brno, Maška became a member of the Matice moravské (Moravian Foundation), a Czech cultural, literary, and scientific society established in 1849 during a time of Czech national revival. After graduating from the Realschule, he attended the German technical university in Brno from 1870 to 1872. At this time, he also became a member of the Akademický čtenářský spolek Zora (Academic Readers’ Club Zora), which cultivated a Czech patriotic agenda and hosted lectures and folk music.

Maška left Brno to study first at the technical school in Vienna and later at the University of Vienna, where he studied mathematics. He graduated in 1877 after completing the state professorial exam, but he had already left Vienna in 1874 to take his first teaching position. Maška had previously held the position of Drawing Assistant at the City High School in Brno from 1870 to 1872. He then worked as a substitute teacher at the state secondary school in Jihlava from 1874 to 1875, and in 1875 he transferred to the state secondary school in Znojmo. Once he had passed the state professorial exam Maška became a teacher of mathematics at the German secondary school at Nový Jičín (Neutitschein), in Moravia, where he taught from 1879 to 1892.

Maška had already become interested in geology, paleontology, and human prehistory while he was a student in Vienna. His first excavation was of a Neolithic site near Znojmo in 1875. During this early stage of his career, Maška was particularly influenced by Jindřich (or Heinrich) Wankel, who was a pioneer of Moravian Paleolithic archaeology. Wankel was a physician in Maška’s hometown of Blansko, but he also conducted important research in cave exploration, paleontology, and prehistoric archaeology during the 1870s and 1880s. When he was a student, Maška worked with Wankel on excavations and later became his professional assistant. Maška was particularly interested in studying the geology and paleontology of the Moravian karst and so began exploring the many caves in the region. Heinrich Preisenhammer, a lawyer in Nový Jičín, was the first to direct Maška’s attention to the caves located nearby on Kotouč Mountain, near Štramberk (Stramberg). Since the Theresianische Akademie (Theresian Academy), a prestigious military academy in Vienna, owned the land Maška had to get their permission to excavate the caves.

He excavated several caves in the region from 1878 to 1882, and in addition to animal fossils from the Pleistocene, he also began to discover human artifacts in some caves. Two caves were particularly important, Čertova díra and Šipka. In Čertova díra, which means Devil’s Hole, Maška unearthed Pleistocene animal bones as well as stone artifacts distributed in five stratigraphic layers in the cave. Maška began excavating at Šipka cave in 1879 and soon found Pleistocene animal bones, charcoal from hearths, and stone tools. The stratigraphy of the cave preserved three distinctive layers of human occupation during the Pleistocene. The most remarkable discovery came on 26 August 1880 when Maška unearthed a fossil human mandible (lower jaw) from the oldest archaeological layer in the cave. The German anthropologist Hermann Schaaffhausen examined the Šipka mandible in November 1880, comparing it with the La Naulette mandible found in Belgium in 1866 and the original Neanderthal fossils found in the Feldhofer Grotte, in Germany, in 1856 (Schaaffhausen 1880; 1883). Today the Šipka mandible is considered to be Neanderthal, but when Maška announced the discovery, it contributed to the debate over whether those fossils belonged merely to an early race of humans or to a distinct Neanderthal species.

Maška relied upon the ideas of the French paleontologist Edouard Lartet and the French prehistoric archaeologist Gabriel de Mortillet to locate his discoveries within a relative chronology of the Paleolithic. Lartet proposed using the animal fossils found in Paleolithic sites to arrange them chronologically into a Cave Bear Age, followed by a Mammoth and Rhinoceros Age, then a Reindeer Age, and finally an Auroch Age. Mortillet subdivided the Paleolithic into a sequence of periods (Acheulean, Mousterian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian) based upon distinctive types of stone artifacts. Judging from the stratigraphy at Čertova díra and Šipka, and the animal fossils and artifacts found in each layer, Maška identified the earliest deposits at the two sites as dating to Lartet’s Cave Bear Age where the artifacts corresponded to Mortillet’s Mousterian. Then there were deposits in the upper layers of the caves belonging to the Mammoth Age, with artifacts corresponding to Mortillet’s Solutrean. At another site, Pekärna cave, he argued that the deposits belonged to Lartet’s Reindeer Age, with artifacts that corresponded to Mortillet’s Magdalenian. Maška also referred to the recently proposed idea that the Pleistocene experienced several glacial periods separated by warmer interglacial periods when discussing the geology and fossils in the Moravian caves he had explored (Maška 1886).

Maška presented two papers before the Anthropologische Gesellschaft in Wien (Anthropological Society in Vienna) announcing his first major discoveries in the caves at Štramberk (Maška 1882a; 1882b). Thinking it important to also address a Czech audience, he published additional articles in Czech periodicals. He then gave a detailed account of his excavations and discoveries in Der diluviale Mensch in Mähren (Diluvial Man in Moravia) published in 1886. These discoveries were consistent with similar discoveries made in Western Europe and were important because they extended knowledge about the European Paleolithic into Moravia. The most contentious discovery was the Šipka mandible. Maška presented the Šipka mandible to his colleagues at a meeting of anthropologists held in Salzburg, Austria, in 1881. Hermann Schaaffhausen repeated his interpretation of the fossil, and Jindřich Wankel noted its similarity to the La Naulette mandible and highlighted its apelike features. But Rudolf Virchow denied there were any apelike features present in the specimen and considered its peculiar morphology to be the result of pathology (Virchow 1882). Virchow, Germany’s most prominent anthropologist, was a vigorous opponent of the idea that the Neanderthal fossils found in 1856 belonged to an apelike evolutionary ancestor of modern humans and consistently opposed similar interpretations of other fossils.

Many other scientists examined the Šipka fossil in the years following its discovery, including the German anthropologists Gustav Schwalbe and Johannes Ranke, and the Czech paleontologist Jan Woldřich. The German dentist Robert Baume examined the mandible and concluded it belonged to a primitive Pleistocene human race (Baume 1883). Another German dentist and researcher, Otto Walkhoff, took an X-ray photograph of the fossil that helped to determine it belonged to a child. He also compared this fossil to other mandibles from Spy, Goyet, and Krapina and argued it belonged to the same geological period as the Neanderthal fossils discovered by the Croatian paleontologist Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger at Krapina between 1899 and 1905. There was also a growing consensus by the turn of the twentieth century that the Šipka specimen was Neanderthal (or Homo primigenius as some scientists now referred to the species). However, Virchow and Ranke continued to argue that its features were due to pathology.

Following the excavations at Štramberk, Maška joined his friend and colleague Jindřich Wankel in excavations at Předmostí in 1882. Předmostí (or Predmost) is an open-air site of loess deposits located in the Bečva river valley near Přerov, in eastern Moravia. Wankel discovered the site in 1879 and conducted excavations there from 1880 to 1882 and from 1884 to 1886. Maška excavated Predmost from 1882 to 1895, with the assistance of Martin Kříž who joined the excavation in 1884. Wankel and Maška found huge numbers of mammoth bones at Predmost, which led them to suggest that prehistoric mammoth hunters had killed these animals (Wankel 1890; 1892; Maška 1889a). Maška also identified three archaeological layers at the site containing artifacts made from stone, bone, and ivory that he dated to the end of the Paleolithic. His most significant discovery, however, came on 7 August 1894 when he unearthed a Paleolithic “mass grave” containing at least twenty individuals, including eight adults and twelve juveniles (including three infants). Fourteen skeletons were nearly complete but six were fragmentary.

By the end of August 1894, Maška had managed to excavate the entire grave. In addition to the skeletons and artifacts, Maška also discovered several so-called Predmost Venus figurines, mammoth metacarpals (finger bones) that had been carved into human figures. These human skeletons and artifacts are now considered to belong to the Gravettian period and are considered to be from 24,000 to 37,000 years old. The discoveries at Predmost were remarkable for the large number of human skeletons recovered and for the specimens of Paleolithic art. Maška traveled widely, presenting papers and displaying his discoveries at anthropological meetings and in public lectures from 1881 until 1913.¹ In 1891 he displayed his prehistoric collection at the Jubilee Exhibition in Prague. Most significantly he read a paper and presented specimens from the Paleolithic tomb at Predmost at the meeting of the Congrès International d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie Préhistoriques (International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology) held in Paris in 1900 (Maška 1902).

Over the many years that Maška excavated Paleolithic sites in Moravia, he tried to interpret his discoveries in the light of the new ideas that were being proposed about Pleistocene geology and prehistoric archaeology. He originally described his paleontological discoveries within the framework of the diluvial geology that was prominent during the first half of the nineteenth century. However, when geologists began to promote the idea that glaciers covered much of Europe during the Pleistocene and that the climate had been much colder than today, Maška adopted the new Ice Age theory. He was familiar with the research of Albrecht Penck, a German geologist and professor at the University of Vienna, who argued that the Ice Age was actually a series of colder glacial periods separated by warmer interglacial periods, and Maška gradually integrated these ideas into his research. He was also familiar with French paleontologist Marcellin Boule’s attempts to correlate Gabriel de Mortillet’s periodization of Paleolithic artifacts with Penck’s geological sequence of glacial and interglacial periods. While Maška primarily investigated Paleolithic sites, he also excavated the Hallstatt tumulus in Hlásnice where he found a burial containing bronze objects, a gold ring and an amber pearl. In the same mound, he unearthed a human skeleton buried with a spear and armor, and two bronze dishes.

For most of these years, Maška had been working as a teacher in Nový Jičín, which gave him sufficient opportunity to conduct excavations in his free time. Thus, it was with some reluctance that he agreed to become the director of the secondary school in Telč in 1892, knowing this would interfere with his excavations. Maška retired from this position in 1915 and returned to Brno to become the curator of the geological and paleontological department of the Moravské zemské muzeum (Moravian Land Museum). In 1902 Maška had approached the museum about buying his extensive collection of more than 200,000 archaeological and paleontological specimens. Negotiations continued for several years, and in 1907 the museum agreed to purchase a large portion of Maška’s collection, and it was finally moved to the museum in 1909. Maška devoted much of his time as curator at the museum organizing its archaeological collections and integrating his own specimens into it.

Maška was a member of several prominent Austrian scientific institutions, including the Anthropologische Gesellschaft in Wien (Anthropological Society in Vienna) and the Central-commission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Kunst-und Historischen Denkmale (Central Commission for Research and Preservation of Art and Historic Monuments). He was also a member of many Moravian and Czech scientific and cultural organizations, some of which were intended to promote Czech culture and nationalist goals. He was a founding member of the Moravská musejní společnost (Moravian Museum Society) in Brno and chaired its opening meeting in 1888. In 1891, only a year after Emperor Franz Joseph I approved its creation, Maška became a member of the Česká akademie pro vědy, slovesnost a umění (Czech Academy of Science, Literature and Art), which had its headquarters in Prague. He was elected a member of the Královská česká společnost nauk (Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences) in 1913. He was also a member of the Přírodovědecký klub v Brně (Natural Science Club of Brno). Maška was a corresponding member of the Vlastenecký musejní spolek v Olomouci (Patriotic Museum Association in Olomouc), which was created in 1883, as well as a foreign member of the Archeologický spolek Včela Čáslavská (Archaeological Association Včela Čáslavská). He received several honors toward the end of his life, including from Emperor Franz Joseph I.

While Maška’s discoveries were widely discussed in Austria and Germany, they received little attention elsewhere until the publication of Robert Munro’s Palaeolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe (1912), Aleš Hrdlička’s The Most Ancient Skeletal Remains of Man (1915), and Henry Fairfield Osborn’s Men of the Old Stone Age (1916). Unfortunately, no anthropologist conducted an extensive analysis of the human skeletons from Predmost until the Czech anthropologist Jindřich Matiegka published descriptions of the fossils in the 1930s (Matiegka 1934; 1938). These two monographs, along with casts made of several of the Predmost skulls, offer modern scientists invaluable information because the fossils were destroyed during the Second World War. Objects from the Moravian Museum, including Maška’s collection, were removed to Mikulov Castle, in southern Moravia, for safekeeping but in 1945 the castle was destroyed when Germans set fire to the castle.

Maška died of a stroke on 6 February 1916 in Brno.

Selected Bibliography

Über den diluvialen Menschen in Stramberg. Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 12 (1882): 32-38.

“Versammlung österreichischen Anthropologen und Urge
schichtsforscher zur Salsburg.” Mittheilungen der Anthropologischen
 Gesellschaft in Wien, Bd XII (1882).

“Pravěké nálezy ve Štramberka.” Časopis Vlastivědného spolku musejního Olomouc 1 (1884): 15-22, 64-69, 152-159.

Der diluviale Mensch in Mähren. Ein Beitrag zur Urgeschichte Mährens. Programm der mährischen Landes-Oberrealschule in Neutitschein für das Schuljahr 1885-86. Neutitschen: Selbstverlag, 1886.

“Die mährischen Mammuthjäger in Predmost.” Correspondenz-blatt der deutschen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte 20 (1889): 9-11.

“Ueber die Gleichzeitigkeit des Mammuth: mit dem diluvialen Menschen in Mähren.” Correspondenz-blatt der deutschen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte 20 (1889): 114-119.

“Ueber zwei neue Jadeitfunde in Mähren.” Correspondenz-blatt der deutschen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte 20 (1889): 212-214.

“Ein viertes Jadeitbeil in Mähren.” Mittheilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 19 (1889): 42-45.

“Lössfunde bei Brünn und der diluviale Mensch.” Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 19 (1889): 46-64.

“Nález diluvialniho clovéka v Predmosti.” Ceský Lid 4 (1895): 161-164.

“La station paléolithique de Predmost en Moravie (Autriche).” Compte rendu de la Congrès International d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie Préhistoriques [1900] (1902): 130-132.

Charles Maška and Hugo Obermaier, “La station solutréenne de Ondratitz (Moravie).” L’Anthropologie 22 (1911): 403-412.

Charles Maška, Hugo Obermaier, and Henri Breuil, “La statuette de mammouth de Predmost.” L’Anthropologie 23 (1912): 273-285.

“Soška mamutí z Předmostí.” Pravěk 8 (1912): 5-12.

Other Sources Cited

Robert Baume, Die Kieferfragmente von La Naulette und aus der Schipkahöhle. als Merkmale für die Existenz inferiorer Menschenrassen in der Diluvialzeit. Leipzig: Arthur Felix, 1883.

Jindřich Matiegka, Homo předmostensis: fosilní člověk z Předmostí na Moravě. 1 Lebky. Prague: Nakladema Ceske Akademie ved a umeni, 1934.

Jindřich Matiegka, Homo předmostensis: fosilní člověk z Předmostí na Moravě. 2 Ostatní části kostrové. Prague: Nakladema Ceske Akademie ved a umeni, 1938.

Hermann Schaaffhausen, “Funde in der Schipkahöhle in Mähren.” Verhandlungen des naturhistorischen Vereins der Preussischen Rheinlanden und Westfalens 37 (1880): 260-264.

Hermann Schaaffhausen, “Ueber den menschlichen Kiefer aus der Schipka-Höhle bei Stramberg in Mähren.” Verhandlungen des naturhistorischen Vereins der Preussischen Rheinlanden und Westfalens 40 (1883): 279-305.

Rudolf Virchow, “Der Kiefer aus der Schipka-Höhle und der Kiefer von La Naulette.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 14 (1882): 277-310.

Jindřich [Heinrich] Wankel, “Die Mammuthjägerstation bei Předmostí im österreichischen Kronlande Mähren.” Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 20 (1890): 1-31.

Jindřich [Heinrich] Wankel. Die Praehistorische Jagd in Mahren. Olmütz, Selbstverlag, 1892.

Secondary Sources

Jan Knies, “Karel Jaroslav Maška (1851-1916).” Wiener prähistorische Zeitschrift 3 (1916): 141-151.

Cyrill Purkyně, “Karel Jaroslav Maška.” Almanach České Akademie 27 (1917): 104-116.

Bohuslav Klíma, “K. J. Maška.” Časopis Moravského musea 36 (1951): 9-20.

Otokar Maška, Karel Jar. Maška: Život a dílo moravského badatele o pravěku. Blansek: Vlastivědné muzeum, 1965.

Martin Oliva, “Dvojité jubileum Karla Jaroslava Mašky (1851-1916) trochu aktuálněji.” Pravěk: časopis moravských a slezských archeologů new series 11 (2001): 401-421.

Petr Kostrhun, “Před stoletím zemřel Karel Jaroslav Maška.” Acta Musei Moraviae 2 (2016): 227-240.

Notes