The difficulties classifying an unusual human fossil found in Germany’s Neander Valley initiated a debate on the age of the human species and the possibility of human evolution and led to the definition of a subspecies called Homo neanderthalensis.
In August, 1856, workers digging for limestone in the Feldhofer grotto, a cave in the wall of a gorge sixty feet above Germany’s Düssel River, unearthed bones from what they believed to be a cave bear but which were later determined to be hominid in origin. The discovery ignited a controversy concerning the age and type of the fossil and generated a debate that must be understood in light of ideologies of race, evolution, and the prehistory of Europe.
The found remains included a skullcap, two thighbones, a pelvic bone, ribs, a scapula, a collar bone, and all three bones of an arm. A heavy brow ridge above the eye sockets characterized the skullcap. Upon finding the bones, the cave owner brought them to Johann Carl Fuhlrott
Schaaffhausen had suggested in an article in 1853 that the constancy of species was not proven, and again, he was predisposed to view this new discovery of bones in an evolutionary context. Because five feet of loam covered the Neander bones, which were also heavily mineralized in the manner of the extinct cave bear, he attributed them, in an 1858 article, to an ancient and primitive human race. He later noted that the brow ridges were characteristically apelike, while the cranial capacity was clearly human. Although the other bones were quite thick, they did not differ appreciatively from modern forms.
In 1859, Charles Darwin
Huxley’s conclusions, published in his Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature
A number of anatomists who rejected evolution maintained that the remains were recent. Although the bones were quite robust, August Mayer
The noted German physician and strong opponent of evolutionary theory, Rudolf Virchow
Another viewpoint relied on a theory of the historical succession of racial types developed by French opponents of evolution. Originally grounded in linguistic analyses of Indo-European or Aryan languages, this view held that Aryans invaded Europe and replaced earlier peoples, whose existence was supported by the European presence of non-Indo-European languages such as Finnish, Basque, and Lapp. In 1842, the Swedish anthropologist and anatomist Anders A. Retzius
As more and more ancient human bones came to light, anthropologists arranged them into a historical series. The Neanderthal skull represented the earliest extreme. A skullcap found in Gibraltar
The idea that the Feldhofer skullcap was pathological was disproved after additional fossils sharing its features surfaced, including a jaw in La Naulette, Belgium, in 1866, some fragments in Wales in 1874, and, most important, two nearly complete skeletons with massive bones and large joint surfaces found in 1886 in the presence of fossils of mid-Quaternary period animals and Mousterian stone tools in Spy, Belgium.
The Spy skeletons were important for two reasons. First, they provided undeniable proof of the antiquity of the Feldhofer bones, which had remained in doubt. Second, the paleontologist Julien Fraipont
The controversy concerning the classification of the Neanderthals and the question of human evolution continued. In 1892, the Dutch anatomist and paleontologist Eugène Dubois
Nineteenth century debates on the Neanderthal highlighted the importance of current racial theories, which arranged living human races in a hierarchy. Those lower in the hierarchy were often compared with the apes, and their skulls oriented in such a manner to give the impression of prognathism (jutting jaws) and backward sloping foreheads. The Neanderthals fit within this framework and, given the paucity of examples, could be interpreted within the range of human variation as understood at the time. None of the evolutionists considered Neanderthals to be a human ancestor, and in the early twenty-first century, anthropologists believe that the Neanderthal forms discovered during the nineteenth century represent an offshoot of the line of human evolution, and that modern humans evolved in Africa and then spread over the earth.
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Drell, Julia R. R. “Neanderthals: A History of Interpretation.” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 19, no. 1 (February, 2000): 1-24. Compares and contrasts the ideological constructs of the Neanderthals during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the 1950’s, and the beginning of the twenty-first century. -
Finlayson, Clive. Neanderthals and Modern Humans: An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Scholarly work on the Neanderthals that explores the relationship between climate change, ecological change, and the biogeographical distribution in Pleistocene humans. -
Jordan, Paul. Neanderthal: Neanderthal Man and the Story of Human Origins. Stroud, England: Sutton, 1999. For the generalist reader. Has many black-and-white illustrations along with eight color photos. Chapter one gives the history of the Neanderthal fossil discoveries. -
Palmer, Douglas. Neanderthal. London: Channel 4 Books, 2000. Book accompanying the television series Neanderthal. -
Tattersall, Ian. The Last Neanderthal: The Rise, Success, and Mysterious Extinction of Our Closest Human Relatives. New York: Macmillan, 1995. Lavishly illustrated with drawings and photographs, this book discusses evolution and Neanderthal lives. Chapter 5 summarizes the discovery and interpretation of the Neanderthals.
Lyell Publishes Principles of Geology
Darwin Publishes On the Origin of Species
Archaeopteryx Lithographica Is Discovered
Lartet Discovers the First Cro-Magnon Remains
Darwin Publishes The Descent of Man
Charles Darwin; Thomas Henry Huxley; Sir Charles Lyell; Rudolf Virchow.