''Homo gardarensis'' (Gardarene Man) was the name mistakenly given to partial remains found in a burial at Garðar,

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...

in a 12th-century Norse settlement. Original statements compared the remains to ''

Homo heidelbergensis ''Homo heidelbergensis'' (also ''H. sapiens heidelbergensis''), sometimes called Heidelbergs, is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene. It was subsumed as a subspecies of ''H. erectus'' in ...

'' but this identification was subsequently disproven. The bones were classified as the remains of a contemporary human with

acromegaly Acromegaly is a disorder that results from excess growth hormone (GH) after the growth plates have closed. The initial symptom is typically enlargement of the hands and feet. There may also be an enlargement of the forehead, jaw, and nose. Other ...

, and put away at

Panum Institute The Panum Building (formerly referred to as the Panum Institute) is a large building complex that is part of the University of Copenhagen's North Campus in Copenhagen, Denmark. It houses the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences. This includes ...

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

Discovery

In 1927 an archaeological dig by the

Museum of Copenhagen The Museum of Copenhagen (Danish: Københavns Bymuseum) is the official museum of Copenhagen, Denmark, documenting the city's history from the 12th century to the present. History The Museum of Copenhagen was founded in 1901. Starting in 1925, t ...

investigated Garðar. During the excavation of the Garðar Cathedral Ruins, a large jawbone was found, as well as a large skull fragment. These were sent to the laboratory of Professor in early 1927. He believed that the bones were that of a 40 or 50-year-old Norseman who had reverted to type. He published a preliminary account in the newspaper

Berlingske ''Berlingske'', previously known as ''Berlingske Tidende'' (, ''Berling's Times''), is a Danish national daily newspaper based in Copenhagen. It is considered a newspaper of record for Denmark. First published on 3 January 1749, ''Berlingske'' ...

in 1929.

Reaction

Sir

Arthur Keith Sir Arthur Keith FRS FRAI (5 February 1866 – 7 January 1955) was a British anatomist and anthropologist, and a proponent of scientific racism. He was a fellow and later the Hunterian Professor and conservator of the Hunterian Museum of the R ...

devoted a chapter in his 1931 work ''New Discoveries Relating to the Antiquity of Man'' to the discovery. Availabl
online
/ref> He concluded that the skull represented an acromegalic person, after comparing photographs of the skull with skulls from known acromegalics like Charles Byrne, as well as the La Chapelle skull and Rhodesian skull.

References

External links

* * * * * {{cite journal , last1 = Kjærgaard , first1 = Peter C. , title = Inventing Homo gardarensis: Prestige, Pressure, and Human Evolution in Interwar Scandinavia , journal = Science in Context , date = 29 April 2014 , volume = 27 , issue = 2 , pages = 359–83 , doi = 10.1017/S0269889714000106 , pmid = 24941795 , s2cid = 143479268 Human remains (archaeological) Norse settlements in Greenland 1927 archaeological discoveries