Neanderthal, Germany
Encyclopedia
The Neandertal is a small valley of the river Düssel
Düssel
The Düssel is a small right tributary of the River Rhine in North Rhine Westphalia, Germany. Its source is between Wülfrath and Velbert. It flows westward through the Neander Valley where the fossils of the first Neanderthal man were found in 1856...

 in the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia
North Rhine-Westphalia
North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...

, located about 12 km (7.5 mi) east of Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

, the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia. The valley belongs to the area of the towns Erkrath
Erkrath
Erkrath is a town in the district of Mettmann, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany-Geography:Erkrath is situated on the Düssel river, directly east of Düsseldorf and west of Wuppertal, close to the famous Neandertal....

 and Mettmann
Mettmann
Mettmann is a Rhenish town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the administrative centre of the district of Mettmann, Germany's most densely populated rural district...

. In 1856, the area became famous for the discovery of Neanderthal 1
Neanderthal 1
Feldhofer 1, Neanderthal 1 is the common name for the initial 40,000-year-old Neanderthal specimen found in Kleine Feldhofer Grotte in August 1856. It represents the beginning of paleoanthropology as a scientific discipline....

, the first specimen of Homo neanderthalensis
Neanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...

to be found.

The Neandertal was originally a limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

 canyon widely known for its rugged scenery, waterfalls and caves. However, industrial mining during the 19th and 20th centuries removed almost all of the limestone and dramatically changed the shape of the valley. It was during such a mining operation that the bones of the original Neanderthal man were found in a cave. Neither the cave nor the cliff in which it was located exists anymore.

During the 19th century the valley was called Neandershöhle (Neander's Hollow), and after 1850 Neanderthal (Neander Valley). It was named after Joachim Neander
Joachim Neander
Joachim Neander was a German Reformed Church teacher, theologian and hymn writer whose most famous hymn, Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation is generally regarded as one of the greatest hymns of praise of the Christian church and, since being translated into English by...

, a 17th-century German pastor. Neander is the Greek translation of his family name Neumann — both names meaning "new man". He lived nearby in Düsseldorf and loved the valley for giving him the inspiration for his compositions. Former names of the gorge were Das Gesteins (The Rockiness) and Das Hundsklipp (Cliff of dogs, perhaps in a sense like "Beastly Cliff").

In 1901 an orthographic reform
German orthography
German orthography, although largely phonemic, shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of almost every word can be derived from its spelling, once the spelling rules are known, but the opposite is not generally the...

 in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 changed the spelling of Thal (valley) to Tal. The scientific names like Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis for Neanderthal
Neanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...

 man are not affected by this change, because the laws of taxonomy
Taxonomy
Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa...

 retain the original spelling at the time of naming. The railway station nearby still carries the name Neanderthal, because the railway was built in 1879.

More bones were found in 1999 after investigation of the ground at the site of the cliff cave, which had been destroyed 150 years before.

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