Anthropos (or Anthropos Pavilion, from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

''Άνθρωπος'',

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, cultu ...

or man) is a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

located in the city of Brno,

South Moravia The South Moravian Region ( cs, Jihomoravský kraj; , ; sk, Juhomoravský kraj) is an administrative unit () of the Czech Republic, located in the south-western part of its historical region of Moravia (an exception is Jobova Lhota which trad ...

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

. The museum is a part of the

Moravské zemské muzeum Moravské zemské muzeum (English: ''Moravian Museum'') is a museum in Brno in the Czech Republic. It is the second-largest and second-oldest museum in the country. Its collections include several million objects from many fields of science and cul ...

(Moravian Museum). It focuses on exhibitions presenting the oldest history of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

and mankind. In a 2009 exhibition, the museum presented the most important art works of the

Paleolithic era The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος '' lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone to ...

, such as

Venus of Willendorf The Venus of Willendorf is an Venus figurine estimated to have been made around 25,000-30,000 years ago. It was found on August 7, 1908, by a workman named Johann Veran or Josef Veram during excavations conducted by archaeologists Josef Szombat ...

(exhibited for the first time outside of

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

) and

Venus of Dolní Věstonice The Venus of Dolní Věstonice ( cs, Věstonická venuše) is a Venus figurine, a ceramic statuette of a nude female figure dated to 29,000–25,000 BCE (Gravettian industry). It was found at the Paleolithic site Dolní Věstonice in the Moravian ...

Basic characteristics

The museum is situated on the right bank of the river Svratka, in the cadastral municipality of Pisárky in the western part of Brno. It consists of a permanent, three-part exhibition presenting the oldest history of human settlement in Moravia and Europe and of temporary exhibitions. The permanent exhibition includes a life-size model of

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks an ...

History

In 1928, during an exhibition of the contemporary culture held at the Brno Exhibition Centre, the archaeologist

Karel Absolon Karel Absolon (16 June 1877 – 6 October 1960) was a Czech archaeologist, geographer, paleontologist, and speleologist. He was born in Boskovice. Absolon was the grandchild of paleontologist Jindřich Wankel. During his studies at Charles ...

presented the findings of the oldest history of human settlements in a solo exhibition called ''Člověk a jeho rod'' (Man and his Ancestry). The exhibition was supported by the first Czechoslovak president

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Tomáš () is a Czech and Slovak given name, equivalent to the name Thomas. It may refer to: * Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937), first President of Czechoslovakia * Tomáš Baťa (1876–1932), Czech footwear entrepreneur * Tomáš Berdyc ...

and by the entrepreneur

Tomáš Baťa Tomáš Baťa () (3 April 1876 – 12 July 1932) was a Czech entrepreneur and founder of the Bata shoe company. His career was cut short when he died in a plane accident due to bad weather. His half-brother Jan Antonín Baťa took over his comp ...

, however, the creation of an independent institute was thwarted by the

financial crisis A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and man ...

and later by the

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. It was not until the 1950s when Absolon's successor, archaeologist and then Director of the Moravian Museum Jan Jelínek enforced building of an independent pavilion in Brno-Pisárky. The museum was opened in 1961. Between 2003 and 2006, the pavilion underwent a large reconstruction. It was reopened to public in 2006.

Permanent exhibition

The permanent exhibition consists of three parts:

1st part

*"Moravian Hunters and Gatherers" *"The Oldest Art of Europe" *"Palaeolithic Technologies"

2nd part

*"Genetics in the Evolution of Man" *"The Story of Mankind"

3rd part

*"Cousins or Brothers? – Ethology of Primates"

References

External links

- official website {{in lang, en Museums in Brno