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Mettmann: Excavation site of the Neanderthal man
- English -
The Mettmann district is world famous - even if hardly anyone in Africa or America knows the name of the region.
However, the name of the most prominent inhabitant is on everyone's lips: in 1856 the remains of the Neanderthals were found here. The district of Mettmann is the first place of discovery of a Neanderthal man worldwide.
The Neanderthals lived in Europe for 250,000 years, adapted to the harsh living conditions of the Ice Age. The discovery of their remains revealed that they actually existed: 40,000 years before our era, a group of people trudged across the plateau near the stream Düssel.
Her forehead is flat, her eye brows are with thick bulged. They wear furs on their bodies as protection against the icy wind. Their feet wander over stones and hard frozen earth. The ice age has Europe under control.
Since there were only a few edible plants in the cool environment, the small tribal groups probably walked behind the grazing animal herds of the Ice Age.
A cave has been washed out of the limestone cliffs of the stone plateau by the stream Düssel and smaller tributaries in millions of years. One of these early humans was buried in this cave about 20 meters above the Düssel. His 16 surviving bones can be seen today in the Neanderthal Museum.
The researchers owe the discovery of the skeleton to limestone mining, which began in the course of industrialization in the 19th century. Even today, the walls in the Neandertal occasionally shake when an explosion is carried out in the last remaining limestone factory.
Limestone became a coveted raw material in the middle of the 19th century. It is required for steel production in the iron industry and as a building material. In 1849, mining began on a large scale in the Neandertal.
The region owes its name to the theologian and hymn writer Joachim Neander, who held services in the 17th century in the then narrow and deep gorge and composed hymns. The Neandertal has long been known to connoisseurs for its rich diluvial deposits.
While working, miners encountered the skeletal parts in the cave. This cave was 3 m wide, 5 m long and 3 m high. The workers cleared the grotto and initially paid little attention to the bones found, because bones from extinct animals were found here very often.
For the workers, the bones looked like those of cave bears, so they threw them away. On the bones you can still clearly see the damage that the workers inflicted on the Neanderthal man with pickaxes.
The clearly visible chipping marks show that the bones were in the anatomical bandage. The left half of the hip and the joint head of the thigh were damaged when exposed. The remaining furrow flows smoothly from one bone to the other.
The fossil finds happened to be noticed by the co-owner of the Neanderthal quarry, Wilhelm Beckershoff, who was just there. His business partner Friedrich Wilhelm Pieper handed them over to the locally known natural scientist Dr. Johann Carl Fuhlrott. Fuhlrott looked at the pieces and quickly noticed that this skeleton had to belong to a diluvial prehistoric man.
Between 1997 and 2000, Ralf Schmitz and Jürgen Thissen carried out additional excavations in the Neandertal, in which 62 further bone fragments were found. Among them were six moreNeanderthal teeth, these may have belonged to the find from 1856.
Some bone fragments matched the 1856 skeleton. There have been so many bones since the excavation that at least one other adult and one sub-adult Neanderthal man is assumed.
The valley is no longer narrow and deep and the waterfalls, cliffs and magnificent caves have largely disappeared. Progress is more important than nature. When the area was placed under nature protection in 1921, the steep gorge had already became a wide, treeless valley.
Millions of tons of rock have been removed in the course of industrialization. The Feldhofer grottoes and Joachim Neander's favorite place no longer exist. Nothing reminds of the Neanderthal's habitat.
The explosions completely destroyed the picturesque rock canyon. For this, beech, hornbeam and canyon forests have conquered the region, which cover the hills and slopes and immerse the former quarries in lush green.
Landscape architects have staged the site as an archaeological garden that tells the eventful history of the valley. If you like, you can also have all of the points from the excavation site explained by an audio system.
There are now a few stone loungers at the site. And a few poles are set up. But the place is really informative thanks to the numerous information from the app or via headphones, for which there are numerous opportunities to plug in.
A lot of information can be heard on headphones, which you can borrow for the tour. If you want to hear all of this on your cell phone, you have been able to download a Neanderthal Museum app for some time now, which has exciting information on all points.
We were positively surprised by the numerous facts that are prepared in such a playful way. If you are traveling in the region, you should definitely stop by there. Warning: the excavation site closes earlier than the museum.
The Neanderthal Museum, opened in 1996, offers further information. The striking spiral building is only a few hundred meters from the site. A paved path leads as a timeline to the place of the historical site.
No admission was charged at the site during our visit!