page_title: Mauer 1
section_title: Description of the fossil
hierarchical_section_title: Mauer 1 / Description of the fossil
caption_attribution_description: English: Title page of the first description of Homo heidelbergensis Deutsch: Titelblatt der Erstbeschreibung von Homo heidelbergensis
context_page_description: The Mauer 1 mandible is the oldest-known specimen of the genus Homo in Germany. It was found in 1907 in a sand quarry in the community Mauer, around 10 km south-east of Heidelberg. The Mauer 1 mandible is the type specimen of the species Homo heidelbergensis. Some European researchers have classified the find as Homo erectus heidelbergensis, regarding it as a subspecies of Homo erectus. In 2010 the mandible's age was for the first time exactly determined to be 609,000 ± 40,000 years. Previously, specialist literature had referred to an age of either 600,000 or 500,000 years on the basis of less accurate dating methods.
context_section_description: The anatomical analysis of the lower jaw of Mauer in its 1908 original species description by Otto Schoetensack was based largely on the expertise of Breslau professor Hermann Klaatsch, which was only hinted at in a brief acknowledgement in the preface.
  In his original species description Schoetensack wrote that the "nature of our object" reveals itself "at first sight" since "a certain disproportion between the jaw and the teeth" is obvious: "The teeth are too small for the bone. The available space would allow for a far greater flexibility of development."
  And further, on the find:
  "It shows a combination of features, that has been previously found neither on a recent nor on a fossilized human mandible. Even the scholar should not be blamed if he would only reluctantly accept it as human: Entirely missing is the one feature, which is regarded as particularly human, namely an outer projection of the chin portion, yet this deficiency is found to be combined with extremely strange dimensions of the mandibular body. The actual proof that we are dealing with human remains here only lies within the nature of the dentition. The completely preserved teeth bear the stamp human as evidence: The canines show no trace of a stronger expression in relation to the other groups of teeth. They suggest a moderate and harmonious co-evolution, as it is the case in recent humans."
  The characteristics of the lower jaw are therefore the lack of a chin on the one hand and on the other it is the considerable size of the lower jaw bone, on which, behind the wisdom tooth a fourth premolar would easily have had space to develop. Since the third molar (the wisdom tooth) is present and its dentin exposed—although only in a few places—the age of death is estimated to be about 20 to 30 years.
  Schoetensack concluded a relationship to modern man (Homo sapiens) from the similarity of the dentition and put the lower jaw in the genus Homo—a view that is still being held unanimously by today's palaeo-anthropologists. He derived the authority to define a new species with the type-epithet heidelbergensis from the fact that the lower jaw—in contrast to modern humans—is missing its chin. With the subtitle of his original description—"A contribution to the paleontology of the human species"—Schoetensack explicitly takes a clear position on the part of Darwinism "in the great debate on the origin of man, namely, that humans have evolved from the animal kingdom and are not the product of a singular act of creation."
  As to the lower jaw of Mauer's precise position in the ancestral chain of modern man Schoetensack expressed only cautious statements. Reluctantly he wrote in his study that "it seems possible that Homo heidelbergensis belongs in the ancestral series of the European man" and—after meticulous and detailed comparison with other European fossils he stated equally vague: "We must therefore denote the mandible of Homo heidelbergensis as pre-neandertaloid." The classification of the lower jaw of Mauer in the time before the Neanderthals proved to be accurate.
  Schoetensack—like many of his colleagues around the beginning of the 20th century—was wrong with his assessment of kinship proximity of the lower jaw of Mauer with the apes (hominids): "The mandible of Homo heidelbergensis reveals the original state that defines mankind's and the ape's common ancestor." In 1924, the hitherto oldest fossil of the big pool of hominid variants—the Taung Child was discovered in what is now South Africa. It is around two million years older than the lower jaw of Mauer and, despite its advanced age, still does not represent the common base of humans and apes.
caption: Title page of the original
  species description
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