Discovery of Neanderthal 1

Neanderthal 1 is the fossil that gave its name to the Neanderthals, an extinct human species. It was found by quarry workers in the Feldhofer cave in the Neander valley, near Dusseldorf in Germany, and consisted of a skullcap and some limb bones, which were passed to the local teacher Johann Carl Fuhlrott. He and the anatomist Hermann Schaaffhausen argued that the bones belonged to an ancient and primitive kind of human, but others, including the pathologist Rudolf Virchow, thought they were from a diseased modern person. In 1864 the geologist William King proposed the species name Homo neanderthalensis. Further finds in Belgium and France later showed that Neanderthals were a distinct group of humans.

Open on the timeline