Less than an hour by train from Düsseldorf, Germany (a separate post on which is here), near the town of Mettman, is one of the most historically important prehistoric sites in the world.
Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof.
There are many sites that have produced better or more assiduously excavated archeological artifacts, but when it was discovered, this one was so unique, so unprecedented, and so revelatory that the name of the region is now the name of a species of which even most people uninterested in science have heard.
The valley is called Neander, and the train stop is called Neanderthal.
You follow the map...
Under the overpass, and around the curve to the left...
Then down a path just off the road to the right...
The path turns a couple times, but is very easily followed. There's a even a bench, in case anyone needs a rest.
From the station, the entire walk down takes less then ten minutes.
And there it is. Not the prettiest building.
The Neanderthal Museum.
Neanderthals seem to have been an evolutionary adaptation to the most recent Ice Age in the northern hemisphere. Our evolutionary ancestors evolved in Africa, and around 700,000 years ago a species descended from Homo erectus or Homo ergaster first began migrating through the Middle East to Asia, Europe, and beyond.
There seems to have been subsequent waves of migrations, but in the brutal Ice Age environment, mutations that made these ancestors stronger, stockier, and smarter thus made them more likely to survive and successfully reproduce. Those evolutionary advantages eventually created a new dominant Homo species in Asia and Europe— Homo neanderthalensis. The oldest evidence of possible Neanderthals was found in Sima de los Huesos, Spain, but the first to be discovered and recognized as a separate species was found here, now but a short walk from the museum. It lived around 40,000 years ago.
The museum is laid out so that you walk up stages of a long, sloping oval, with the exhibits displayed in order from the lower floor to the top.
There are cases of bones, some of which are reproductions of specimens from other locations and museums, and some of which are original, found at the nearby site. They are presented to provide evolutionary context.
Headphones are provided, and they can be plugged in at small panels along the way, as an audio guide.
The first Neanderthal bones ever discovered were in the nearby Feldhof cave, which was being mined for limestone in 1856. The cave was in a cliffside, and the refuse was tossed out to the base of the cliff.
The quarrymen had no idea what they'd found, but fortunately a teacher named Johann Carl Fuhlrott, from nearby Elberfeld, realized these were not from a recent death. He kept and examined the bones. He immediately considered them to be from an Ice Age era burial. This was at a time when the existence of Ice Ages was highly controversial, as was the idea of fossils of prehistoric people, both of which contradicted what was thought to be the age of the Earth, based on interpretations from the Bible. This was still three years before Charles Darwin in 1859 published his revolutionary book on evolution, On the Origin of Species. Fuhlrott's interpretation was much debated, and the era's leading German scientist believed it was bunk.
Fuhlrott's discovery was not considered important, and as the miners eventually eradicated the entire cliff, even the location of the find was forgotten. Over the next century, human evolution became accepted by everyone who understands science, and archeological evidence of Neanderthals became by far the most widely excavated of all prehistoric ancestors and relatives of modern humans, its bones and tools found in many places in Asia, Europe, and Africa, But the location of its initial discovery was unknown.
In 1997 and 2000, archeologists Ralf-W. Schmitz and Jurgen Thissen determined to locate this historic site, and beneath a thick pile of limestone at what had been the base of the long gone Feldhof cliff, discovered soil that had been removed from the cave. Carefully sifting the soil, they discovered fragments of bones. Some of these bones perfectly fit bones found in 1856, and long since held in museums.
As a side note, the English language is an amalgamation of earlier languages. For thousands of years, the British Isles have been occupied and colonized by waves of immigrants and conquerors, including prehistoric humans, Celts, Romans, the Medieval Germanic Angles and Saxons, Vikings mostly along the east coast, and the French from Normandy, themselves also descended from the Vikings: Normans— Norsemen— North Men. The latter three waves left the strongest imprint on modern English.
It's not hard for English speakers to figure out many modern German (or French) words.
There are also displays of different types of prehistoric tools, again some reproductions of artifacts found elsewhere, and some found here.
Neanderthals mostly made what are called Mousterian tools, after the archeological site of Le Moustier in France, which was first excavated in 1863.
These post-date Neanderthals, but are originals.
Humans evolved in Africa, over millions of years, and much of the most important research on human evolution therefore takes place there. One of the most famous paleoanthropological discoveries anywhere was the skeleton of "Lucy," which was remarkably complete, and was by far the clearest evidence of our evolutionary ancestors from much earlier than anything previously found. It is now believed that the last common ancestor of humans and apes lived about 5 million years ago. After that, we took our own evolutionary paths.
The scientists researching the Hadar site in Ethiopia had had little luck in 1974, and were a bit frustrated. Even getting permits was very difficult, given the often tenuous political climate in Ethiopia, and the research season also was relatively short, given the scorching heat. Scientists are trained to know what to look for, but even so, making a significant discovery is also largely based on luck. That year, luck didn't seem to be working out. Until it was.
The night of the discovery, the scientists were overwhelmed with excitement. This was big. They knew they had made scientific history, and they knew that knowledge of human evolution was going to expand to millions of years earlier than previously had been possible. Back in their tents that night, they celebrated. They had a simple music setup, and turned it up as they partied. The Beatles' Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds came on. The Four Lads From Liverpool put their imprint even on science.
The museum includes a section of scientifically accurate models of how prehistoric species might have appeared. Meet Lucy.
Paleoanthropologists sometimes describe a split in their interpretations of the fossil record as between "lumpers" and "splitters." Lumpers tend to find commonality between fossils from different sites and regions and even eras, and consider many seeming physiological differences as but local variations, or similar to the widely diverse physical variations found among people today. Splitters see more distinct species in the different fossil variations.
Everyone agrees that Homo erectus is a distinct species, but there is debate whether it then evolved into Homo ergaster. Some think the fossils labeled ergaster are really just variants of erectus. Whether or not it then evolved into ergaster, erectus was a huge evolutionary advance from earlier species, both in its size and body shape, particularly the face and brain. Its tools also were much more developed than those of the earlier Homo habilis, which was the earliest species to make tools. With erectus, for the first time, tools seem to have been pre-planned and designed, built along patterns rather than just improvised in the moment. This represented a huge development in cognitive ability.
The museum's superb recreation section accurately represents the debate whether erectus/ergaster was one species or two.
Erectus/ergaster was the first Homo species to migrate out of Africa into Asia and Europe. During the most recent Ice Age, that migrant species evolved into Neanderthals, with a possible and debated intermediate evolutionary species, Homo heidelbergensis, between them.
While Neanderthals were evolving in Ice Age Europe and Asia, in Africa the climate was milder, and different adaptations proved favorable to survival, including brain development that enabled more sophisticated language and communication, better social skills, and wider social and trade networks. This meant that far more people could learn and benefit from new technologies and other discoveries, including the much more sophisticated tools that were being developed by more complex cognitive abilities and increasingly dexterous hands. Wider social networks also broadened the gene pool, and made it easier for a species to survive pandemic diseases.
Another possible descendant species from the erectus/ergaster population that remained in Africa has been known as Homo rhodesiensis, and whether it is distinct or a local variation of heidelbergensis, or whether there was any intermediate species between erectus/ergaster and Neanderthals and humans also is still debated. It's possible that Homo erectus evolved directly into Neanderthals in Europe and Asia, and directly into early modern humans in Africa. Little wonder that scientists describe their knowledge of this era of human evolution as "the muddle in the middle." Recent DNA analysis suggests that what is called by some heidelbergensis cannot be the common ancestor of both Neanderthals and humans, so if there were intermediate species, they probably already had split into distinct lineages in Africa and in Europe/Asia. Whatever the case, while Neanderthals were evolving in Asia and Europe, early Homo sapiens were evolving in Africa.
The earliest East African Homo sapiens fossils were found at the Omo-Kibish site in Ethiopia, and were dated to 233 ± 22 kyr— which means 233,000 years ago, plus or minus 22,000 years. In 2017, even earlier sapiens fossils were found at the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco, and date to 315 ± 34 kyr.
About a hundred thousand years ago, early modern humans began to migrate out of Africa in large enough numbers to begin populating Europe and Asia. The Middle East was the gateway, and there is archeological evidence of early modern humans and Neanderthals living contemporaneously in nearby caves, at Nahal Me'arot, Israel. There is no evidence of conflict between them. There is little evidence of conflict between early modern humans and Neanderthals anywhere.
The earliest reliably dated modern humans in Europe are from the Bacho Kiro Cave, in Bulgaria, some 44,000 years ago. Recent evidence has raised the possibility of early modern humans in France around 54,000 years ago, but the validity of that evidence is still debated. Humans didn't wipe out Neanderthals, but as the Ice Age receded, and more territory became accessible to these two nomadic gatherer/hunter species, humans were better able to survive and thrive in various habitats, They quickly spread wherever they could reach. Resilient and highly adaptable, humans proved capable of surviving almost anywhere, in almost any habitat. Their expanding population meant that there was less land and fewer resources and therefore less territory available for Neanderthals.
Over time, Neanderthals moved or were effectively consigned to more marginal territories. There is evidence that they traded with humans, and tried to emulate their arts and technologies, but their own tools were never going to be as refined and effective. Without open conflict, they nevertheless were outcompeted for available resources in what was still an extremely challenging climate. The consensus once had been that they were an evolutionary dead end, but DNA evidence from recent decades has proven that some did mate with early humans, and we modern humans carry some of their DNA. Those that didn't expand their mating pool went extinct and left no descendants.
Some 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, still in the midst of the most recent Ice Age, the last Neanderthal died, possibly in northern Spain, Gibraltar, or western Russia. For millions of years, there had been multiple contemporary Homo species, but with the extinction of the Neanderthals, only one remained: Humans.
This display shows the locations of important paleoanthropological discovery and research sites. South Africa and East Africa's Great Rift Valley had been thought to be the most important regions where humans evolved, but recent discoveries in northern and western Africa have proven that our evolutionary ancestors were adapting to and evolving in regions throughout the continent. A consortium of scientists from Britain and Germany concluded that "human ancestors were scattered across Africa, and largely kept apart by a combination of diverse habitats and shifting environmental boundaries, such as forests and deserts. Millennia of separation gave rise to a staggering diversity of human forms, whose mixing ultimately shaped our species."
There is no real scientific doubt that humans evolved in Africa.
This video display cycles images of the known territories of different species. Lucy was afarensis.
Throughout the museum, these panels explain the exhibits. English having become the closest we have to a global language, the panels are in German and English. They're all worth reading, and some of what I'm writing is based on them. Some not. This one is good.
The gent at the railing above is a model of a Neanderthal, based on an actual specimen, dressed in modern clothes. If moving among us, they could pass unnoticed. People tend to disparage Neanderthals, by giving stupid or regressive people that name, but they were actually pretty intelligent— their brains may have been bigger than ours— and they don't seem to have been particularly violent. There is archeological evidence that they cared for their weak and mourned their dead.
They were stronger and more robust than modern people, with thick bones, heavy brow ridges, powerful jaws and teeth, and receding foreheads and chins. Their large, powerful hands were useful in many ways, but they did not have the dexterity to make the delicately refined tools sapiens made.
Overall, however, they were built very similarly to sapiens.
Really great panels.
A Neanderthal burial.
There are even displays on the work of scientists. She's making a 3-D image of a bone. The methods used to excavate and preserve and document archeological finds continually grows more sophisticated and precise.
On the production of flake tools.
Reproductions of important skull finds. Australopithecus africanus on the right, Homo rudolfensis in the middle, and an early Homo erectus on the left. In the jar is a reproduction of a modern human brain. Note how much smaller the cranial capacities of our evolutionary ancestors were .
A Neanderthal girl.
When you reach the top, you can take stairs or an elevator back down.
A view of the models section.
Back outside, and on to the original site. The day I visited, it was 106° F. If necessary, you can buy water at the museum's small gift shop.
And once again, an easy map shows you where to go.
These pedestals have explanatory panels on top. They also have jacks for the audio guide headphones.
Presumably, it's sometimes necessary to use a ticket to get to the site. On the day I visited, the gates were open. This path also has inlaid timeline tiles, representing how long it was between the evolutionary jumps of the Homo lineage, and how relatively quick the evolution from erectus to sapiens has been.
Those poles on the right are located where Schmitz and Thissen found the limestone and soil from the original cave. The cliff would have been on the left. Gone. A victim of 19th century industrialization. The Düssel River is behind the trees on the right.
At the far end of the field, the timeline compacts.
Some different views of the trail back to the museum.
Past the museum, the trail curves up to the left, just behind the small wall.
And back on the road, the train stop just ahead.
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