The funny theories about the first Neanderthal man
The Neanderthal Man, our prehistoric ancestor, gets its name from the Feldhofer cave in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, where a skeleton was first unearthed in 1856 by paleontologist Johann Fuhlrott. This was the first historical discovery of primitive human bones, and in the ambiguous climate between science and religion that characterized the 19th century, it became the subject of a fierce "scientific" debate.
Some scholars claimed it was simply the skull of a deformed man; Dr. Wagner of Göttingen hypothesized it was an "old Dutchman," while Dr. Mayer of Bonn attributed it to a Cossack (!) who had pursued Napoleon's retreating army. Professor Rudolf Virchow, one of the leading medical experts of his time, ended the controversy by declaring that it was a man who had suffered from rickets in childhood and arthritis in old age, and had ultimately died from a severe blow to the head!
