The first Europeans

It happened in August 1856 in a quarry in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf. While quarrying limestone, two workers found some bone fragments. They didn’t know what to do with them and carelessly threw them onto a rubbish heap. Then they also discovered part of a skull.

How did the human remains get there? Had someone been murdered here? The quarry owner eventually took the fragments to Johann Carl Fuhlrott. He was a teacher and a well-known naturalist. Fuhlrott showed the remains to other experts.

Soon they were certain. The skull and bones had been in the ground for a long time. No one had been murdered; they were the remains of a previously unknown prehistoric human. The species is now named “Homo neanderthalensis” after the place where it was found. This means “human from the Neander Valley”, or, more briefly, “Neanderthal”. Today, the h is usually left out of the name.

Until about 150 years ago, the Neander Valley was a gorge carved out by the River Düssel. It was about 1,000 metres long and 50 metres deep. It once had numerous waterfalls, caves and a great variety of plants and animals. The gorge was very popular with hikers, climbers and naturalists.

However, its appearance has changed completely since then. The rocks in the Neander Valley contained limestone. From around 1850, the steel and coal industries in the Ruhr needed large quantities of this building material. So the limestone rocks in the Neander Valley were quarried and turned into building materials.

Today, a wide meadow lies where the narrow valley once was. Stones and poles mark the spot where, more than 150 years ago, two workers came across the remains of a prehistoric human by chance.

We now know that the person whose remains were found lived about 42,000 years ago. A model of such a person has been reconstructed based on bones found in the Neander Valley.

It is believed that this model looks roughly like the person whose bones were found in the Neander Valley. You can see the model at the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, near Düsseldorf. Many objects and information panels about Neanderthals and human evolution are also on display there.

Remains of Neanderthals have also been found and studied elsewhere in Europe. Scientists discovered that there are some clear differences between Neanderthals and people living today. These are particularly noticeable when comparing their skull bones.

Neanderthals had a low forehead. There were prominent ridges above their eyes. A depression could often be felt at the back of the skull. Behind the last molar, the teeth had a large gap. Neanderthals' chins sloped slightly backwards.

The first creatures considered to be human lived in East Africa about four million years ago.

Researchers discovered a particularly interesting example of an early human in Ethiopia in 1974. They found the remains of a woman. She died about 3.2 million years ago. At the time of her death, she was probably around 25 years old. She was only a little over a metre tall, could walk upright, and her body was completely covered in hair. She was named “Lucy”.

“Lucy” and her relatives are known in science as “Australopithecines”. People of that time still had many features in common with great apes. It is thought that they were good climbers and often sought shelter high in the treetops.

About 2.5 million years ago, early humans learned to use stone tools. About half a million years later, Homo erectus, meaning “upright man,” lived. Members of this species left Africa and migrated to Europe and Asia. The Neanderthals evolved from this species.

Modern humans, “Homo sapiens sapiens”, have existed for only about 160,000 years. They too migrated from Africa to Europe, where they encountered Neanderthals. It is now believed that modern humans displaced the Neanderthals. Neanderthals have been extinct for about 30,000 years, and the modern human species spread across the world.

We modern humans are clearly different from Neanderthals. We have a steeply rising forehead, no prominent brow ridges and no hollow at the back of the head. We also don’t have a gap behind our last molar. Our chin usually sticks out slightly. The species we belong to is called “Homo sapiens sapiens” by scientists. This means “wise, insightful human.”

Neanderthals grew to only about 1.55 to 1.65 m tall, so on average they were significantly shorter than people today. Weighing 60 to 80 kg, they were about as heavy as we are. Women were, on average, slightly shorter and lighter than men. That is still the case today.

Neanderthals were more muscular than most of us today. Their teeth were stronger, and their brains were even larger than those of people living today.

The oldest traces of Neanderthals were found in Croatia near the town of Krapina and in Italy. Neanderthals once lived in France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Iraq, Israel and Uzbekistan as well.

In Neanderthal times, Europe was very cold, on average about 5 to 6 degrees colder than today. An ice age brought glaciers, remnants of which we can still see today. The Alps and large parts of northern Europe were covered in ice and glaciers. The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago.

Temperatures were not always the same. Centuries with particularly cold winters were followed by others when it was somewhat warmer. This had a major impact on animal and plant life.

The Neanderthals survived this cold period because they could make fire, which protected them from the cold and wild animals and allowed them to prepare meat and plant-based foods.

Neanderthals mainly lived in caves. When hunting, they spent nights in tents they built from wooden poles and hides. They ate mostly meat. They hunted bison, aurochs, woolly rhinoceroses, wild horses, reindeer and mammoths. They also gathered fruit and seeds. Since they hardly stored any food, they probably often went hungry.

Neanderthals made life easier by making wooden spears and tools from stone, bone or shells. They probably also used birch tar as an adhesive. They made clothes and probably had their own language, too. They lived together in small groups that had little contact with one another. There were probably only a few thousand Neanderthals living in Europe at any one time.

Neanderthals and modern humans surely interbred, too. In any case, each of us carries Neanderthal DNA. That is why it is fair to call Neanderthals the first Europeans.