page_title: Neanderthal 1
section_title: Discovery
hierarchical_section_title: Neanderthal 1 / Discovery
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Schnittzeichnung der Kleinen Feldhofer Grotte, Fundort des Fossils Neandertal 1 (1856) English: Section of the Neanderthal Cave (Kleine Feldhofer Grotte) in Erkrath near Düsseldorf (Germany).
context_page_description: Feldhofer 1, or Neanderthal 1 is the scientific name of the 40,000-year-old type specimen fossil of the species Homo neanderthalensis, found in August 1856 in a German cave, the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte in the Neandertal valley, 13 km east of Düsseldorf. In 1864 the fossil's description was first published in a scientific magazine and officially named.
  However, the find was not the first Neanderthal fossil discovery. Rather, the true nature and significance had not been recognized on any of the earlier fossils, and therefore no separate species' name was assigned.
  The discovery was made by limestone quarry miners. Neanderthal 1 consists of a skullcap, two femora, the three right arm bones, two of the left arm bones, ilium, and fragments of a scapula and ribs. The fossils were given to Johann Carl Fuhlrott, a local teacher and amateur naturalist. The first description of the remains was made by anatomist Hermann Schaaffhausen and the find was announced jointly in 1857.
  In 1997, the specimen was the first to yield Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA fragments.
context_section_description: Limestone has been mined in the Neander Valley since the early 16th century. From the mid 19th century it has been carried out on an industrial scale. In August 1856 two Italian workers extended the entrance to the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte by removing the naturally sintered, and therefore rock-hard, clay layers which were embedded into the limestones of the cave. Upon removing the sediment fillings, the workers unearthed fossilized bones in a depth of 60 cm (24 in) which, initially unnoticed, were disposed of among mud and debris and dispersed into the valley.
  The bones came to the attention of the cave's owner Wilhelm Beckershoff, who assumed them to be the remains of a cave bear. Beckershoff and quarry co-owner Friedrich Wilhelm Pieper retrieved 16 bones and fragments from the rubble and handed them to the Elberfelder teacher and fossil collector Johann Carl Fuhlrott. A skullcap with a fragment of the left temporal bone, a fragment of the right scapula, a right clavicle, both humerus (the right side complete), a complete right radius, fragments of right and left forearm bones, five ribs, an almost complete left half of the pelvis and both femora - were completely preserved.
  Fuhlrott allegedly immediately recognized the remains as a human who significantly differed from modern man. Without Fuhlrott's approval, the following notice was published on September 4, 1856 in the Elberfeld newspaper and the Barmer local Journal:
  "In neighboring Neanderthal, a surprising discovery was made in recent days. The removal of the limestone rocks, which certainly is a dreadful deed from a picturesque point of view, revealed a cave, which had been filled with mud-clay over the centuries. While clearing away this clay a human skeleton was found, which undoubtedly would have been left unconsidered and lost if not, thankfully, Dr. Fuhlrott of Elberfeld had secured and examined the find. Examination of the skeleton, namely the skull, revealed the individual belonged to the tribe of the Flat Heads, which still live in the American West and of which several skulls have been found in recent years on the upper Danube in Sigmaringen. Maybe the find can help to settle the issue of whether the skeleton belonged to an early central European original inhabitant people or simply to one of Attila's roaming horde's men."
  This report brought the find to the attention of two Bonn professors of anatomy, Hermann Schaaffhausen and August Franz Josef Karl Mayer. They contacted Fuhlrott and asked him to send the bones. Fuhlrott personally brought them to Bonn the following winter, where Schaaffhausen had them examined. Six months later, on 2 June 1857 Schaaffhausen and Fuhlrott presented the results of their investigations to the members of the Natural History Society of the Prussian Rhineland and Westphalen. Paleo-anthropologist and primatologist Ian Tattersall describes the results as follows:
  "Here Fuhlrott summarized the history of discovery of these fossils, which was based on a careful survey of the workers who had excavated the finds. He emphasized the age of the bones, which was obvious by both, the thickness of the overlying strata [...] as well as by the strong mineralization and dendrite formation on the surface, which were also found in the bones of the extinct giant cave bears. The description and interpretation of the find was Schaaffhausen's task."
  Schaaffhausen described the unusually massive bone structure of the find in detail and particularly noted the shape of the cranium - especially the low, sloping forehead and the bony ridges above the eyes:
  "He considered these characteristics to be natural, rather than the results of illness or abnormal development. They reminded him of the Great Apes. Nevertheless, this was not an ape, and if its features were not pathological, they must be attributed to the age of the find. [...] Although his own search for specimens that were similar to Neanderthal was unsuccessful, he came to the conclusion that the bones belonged to a representative of a native tribe who had inhabited Germany before the arrival o
caption: Kleine Feldhofer Grotte (cross-section);
   from: Charles Lyell (1863): The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.
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