516 ANNUAL REPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION^ 1913. 



The skull, with other parts of the skeleton, Avere found in August, 

 1856.' They were dug out accidentally by two laborers from a small 

 cave, located at the entrance of the Neanderthal gorge, in West- 

 phalia, western Germany. The bones were given but little attention 

 by the workmen, but fortunately news of the find reached an Elber- 

 feld physician, Dr. Fuhlrott, and he was still able to save the skull- 

 cap, the femora, humeri, ulna^, right radius, portion of the left pelvic 

 bone, jDortion of the right scapula, piece of the right clavicle, and 

 five pieces of ribs (see pis. 14-18). 



Soon after their discovery the skeletal remains of the Neanderthal 

 man received the attention of Prof. D. Schaatfhausen, of Bonn, who 

 on the 4th of February, 1857, made a preliminary report upon them 

 at the meeting of the Lower Ehine Medical and Natural History 

 Society, of Bonn." At the general meeting of the Natural History 

 Society of Prussian Rhineland and Westphalia, at Bonn, on the 2d 

 of June, 1857, Dr. Fuhlrott himself gave a full account of the 

 locality of the find and of the circumstances under which the dis- 

 covery was made. 



The principal detail^ of Dr. Fuhlrott's ^ report were as follows : 



A small cave or grotto, high enough to admit a man and about 15 feet deep 

 from the entrance, which is 7 or 8 feet wide, exists in the southern w^all of the 

 gorge of the Neanderthal, as it is termed, at a distance of about 100 feet from 

 the Diissel ^ and about GO feet above the bottom of the valley (fig. 3). In its 

 earlier and uninjured condition this cavern opened upon a narrow plateau lying 

 in front of it and from which the rocky wall descended almost perpendicularly 

 to the river. It could be reached, though with difficulty, from above. The 

 uneven floor was covered to a thickness of 4 or 5 feet with a deposit of mud, 

 sparingly intermixed with rounded fragments of chert. In the removing of 

 this deposit the bones were discovered. The skull was first noticed, placed 

 nearest to the entrance of the cavern ; and further in were the other bones lying 

 in the same horizontal plane. Of this I was assured in the most positive terms 

 by tv/o laborers who were employed to clear out the grotto, and who were ques- 

 tioned by me on the spot. At first no idea was entertained of the bones being 

 human ; and it was not till several weeks after their discovery that they were 

 recognized as such by me and placed in security. But. as the importance of 

 the discovery was not at the time pei'ceived, the laborers were very careless iu 

 the collecting and secured chiefly only the larger bones; and to this circum- 

 stance it may be attributed that fragments merely of the probably perfect 

 skeleton came into my possession. 



Fuhlrott held that the Neanderthal bones might be regarded as 

 " fossil," by which he possibly meant not merely mineralized, but 



1 In many publications the date is erroneously given as 1857. 



3 Verhandl. d. naturhist. Vereins der preuss. Rheinlande und Westphalens, vol. 14. 

 Bonn, 1S57. Also " Znr Kenntniss dcr iiltesten Rassenschiidel," Miiller's Archiv, 1858, 

 p. 453 et seq. 



3 lb. Correspondenzblatt No. 2. The above follows G. Busks's Translation of Schaaff- 

 hausen's " On the crania of the most ancient races of man," Nat. Hist. Review, April, 

 1861. 



* Near Hochdal, between Elberfeld and Diisseldorf. 



