lower canine is behind the upper,the remains of the hole on the ante-
rior side,in relation to its displacement from the hole on the posterior
side,could only have been made by the upper precarnassial or carnas-
sials or canines.We can immediately exclude precarnassial and carnas-
sial teeth because of the inappropriate position of the two holes in
relation to the position of these teeth in the open jaw.So only canines
enter into consideration.In piercing with two canines,with all possible
bites,the disposition of the distal hole and opposing notch will be as on
the flute.This is also the only feature that proves a carnivore origin of at
least one hole and one notch on the flute.The paraxial direction of canine
occlusion in carnivores could also explain the remaining hole and notch
without opposing tooth marks,but does not explain different results of
similar bites on the flute.
Since the anterior side of the bone is convex,punching it takes con-
siderably greater strength than it would on the flat,posterior side,all
other things being equal.So canines would at once pierce and break the
central part of the diaphysis on the posterior side more easily than on
the anterior side.However,this happened on the anterior side,that is,
under the point of the upper canine;on the other side,only a hole was
created that is even closer to the edge than the opposing hole would have
been had this not been broken.On the basis of physical laws and exper-
imental work,this is an entirely unexpected result.No such damage or
any macroscopic trace is seen of the point of the opposing tooth or of
other opposing teeth in suitable places beside the complete and half-
holes on the other end of bone.Opposing and neighboring teeth should
have made an impression with such a powerful bite force as is required
for the tooth to pierce the thick,compact bone of the diaphysis.
In piercing compact bone with canines,the lower canine has much
more opportunity to make a hole than the upper one.The reason lies in
the geometry of the bone shell and in the explicit paraxial occlusion of
canine teeth,which have the effect of splitting the force produced by the
lower jaw into two components,axial and transverse (we owe this expla-
nation to Dr.Pavel Cevc,Institute “Jozˇef Sˇtefan,”Ljubljana).The trans-
verse component precludes the upper canine from penetrating the
arched anterior surface of the bone.In this case it would be very diffi-
cult for a carnivore that pierced the bone several times with abnormal
chewing behavior to place the same tooth (i.e.,lower canine) each time
exactly in line with a previous hole.All holes and notches on the poste-
rior side are disposed in a straight line.
In summary,if the bone was modified exclusively by carnivores,
which is an attractive and simple answer to our archeological problem
(Albrecht et al.1998;Chase and Nowell,1998;d’Errico et al.1998),it is
necessary to recognize that numerous details do not conform with such244 Drago Kunej and Ivan Turk