Johann Carl Fuhlrott (31 December 1803, Leinefelde, Germany – 17 October 1877,

Wuppertal Wuppertal (; ) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany, with a population of 355,000. Wuppertal is the seventh-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and List of cities in Germany by population, 17th-largest in Germany. It ...

) was an early German

paleoanthropologist Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and biological anthropology, anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as wikt:hominization, hominization, throug ...

. He is famous for recognizing the significance of the bones of

Neanderthal 1 Feldhofer 1 or Neanderthal 1 is the scientific name of the 40,000-year-old Type (biology), type specimen fossil of the species Neanderthal, ''Homo neanderthalensis''. The fossil was discovered in August 1856 in the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte cave ...

, a Neanderthal specimen discovered by German laborers who were digging for limestone in Neander valley (''Neanderthal'' in German) in August 1856. Originally disregarded, Fuhlrott, to his eternal credit, had the insight to recognize them for what they were: the remains of a previously unknown type of human.

Biography

His parents were the innkeeper Johannes Philipp Fuhlrott and his wife Maria Magdalena, née Nussbaum. His parents had died by the time he was ten and he was raised by his uncle, the Catholic priest Carl Bernhard Fuhlrott, in Seulingen. In 1835 he married Josepha Amalia Kellner (1812–1850), with whom he had six children. After studying mathematics and natural sciences at the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

, Fuhlrott became a teacher at the Gymnasium in Elberfeld. In 1856, workers in a lime quarry in the nearby canyon called Gesteins or Neandertal (southwest of

Mettmann Mettmann () is a town in the northern part of the Bergisches Land, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the administrative centre of the Mettmann (district), district of Mettmann, Germany's most densely populated rural district. The town lies ...

) showed him bones they had found in a cave and thought to belong to a bear. Fuhlrott identified them as human and thought them to be very old. He recognized them to be different from the usual bones of humans and showed them to the Professor of

Anatomy Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...

at the University of Bonn, Hermann Schaaffhausen. Together they announced the discovery publicly in 1857. In their view the bones represented the remnants of an ancient human race, different from contemporary humans. Their views were not readily accepted as it contradicted literal interpretations of the Bible, and

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...

's work about

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

had not yet been published. Today, Fuhlrott and Schaaffhausen are considered to be the founders of

paleoanthropology Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinsh ...

, and the

taxon In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and ...

they discovered is referred to as ''

Homo neanderthalensis Neanderthals ( ; ''Homo neanderthalensis'' or sometimes ''H. sapiens neanderthalensis'') are an extinct group of archaic humans who inhabited Europe and Western and Central Asia during the Middle to Late Pleistocene. Neanderthal extinctio ...

'' in honor of the site where it was first identified.

References

External links

Fuhlrott MuseumNeanderthal Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fuhlrott, Johann Carl 1803 births 1877 deaths People from Leinefelde-Worbis German anthropologists German paleoanthropologists University of Bonn alumni

Biography

See also

References

External links