128 
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
celebrated Neanderthal cave. This northern tributary of 
the Rhine, after passing Elberfeld, and some distance 
above its termination, enters a deep ravine, with a lime- 
stone cliff on one side — the left or south side — rising to 
a height of i6o feet. At the time of the discovery, 
the early spring of 1857, the Neanderthal cave opened 
on the face of this limestone cliff, 60 feet above the level 
of the Dassel and 100 feet below the neighbouring 
plateau (fig. 43). By good fortune a physician in the 
adjacent town of Elberfeld, Dr Fuhlrott, was interested 
in fossil remains and in cave exploration, and kept a 
Fig. 43. — Lyell's diagram of the Neanderthal cave, 
watch on a party of workmen who were quarrying near 
the cave. When the cave was cleared out, Dr Fuhlrott 
secured from the workmen certain remarkable bones, 
which at first he did not believe to be those of a human 
being. They lay at a depth of 4 or 5 feet in the loam 
filling the floor of the cave. Dr Fuhlrott afterwards 
dispatched the various parts of the skeleton — the vault 
of a skull, right and left thigh bones, and right and 
left humerus (the left was imperfect), fragments of the 
pelvis, shoulder blade, and of ribs — to Professor Schaaff- 
hausen of Bonn, an expert anatomist. Nothing was found 
in the cave or observed afterwards which gave a clue 
to the antiquity of the Neanderthal skeleton ; no remains 
