The Loschbour man (also Loschbur man) is a skeleton of ''

Homo sapiens 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, culture, ...

'' from the

European Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...

discovered in 1935 in Mullerthal, in the commune of

Waldbillig Waldbillig ( lb, Waldbëlleg or (locally) ) is a commune and small town in the canton of Echternach, Luxembourg. , the town of Waldbillig, which lies in the centre of the commune, has a population of 566. Other towns within the commune include ...

, Luxembourg.

History

The skeleton, nearly complete, was discovered on 7 October 1935 under a

rock shelter A rock shelter (also rockhouse, crepuscular cave, bluff shelter, or abri) is a shallow cave-like opening at the base of a bluff or cliff. In contrast to solutional caves (karst), which are often many miles long, rock shelters are almost alway ...

in Mullerthal on the banks of the

Black Ernz The Black Ernz (, , ) is a river flowing through Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ...

. It was found by amateur archeologist and school teacher Nicolas Thill. It is now at the

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...

Luxembourg City Luxembourg ( lb, Lëtzebuerg; french: Luxembourg; german: Luxemburg), also known as Luxembourg City ( lb, Stad Lëtzebuerg, link=no or ; french: Ville de Luxembourg, link=no; german: Stadt Luxemburg, link=no or ), is the capital city of the Lu ...

Life

Loschbour man was a

hunter-gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

, and the

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fir ...

tools used for stalking and killing prey (wild boar and deer) were found by his body. He was one of the last of his kind, soon to be supplanted by new populations more likely to herd rather than hunt—and with paler skins. According to DNA tests reported in 2014, Loschbour man was male, was described as having an "intermediate" to light skin tone (90%), brown or black hair (98%), and likely blue eyes (56%). In contrast to 90% of modern Europeans, he was lactose-intolerant. When he died, he was between 34 and 47 years old, tall, and weighed between . The cremated remains of another person, likely an adult woman, were found nearby, in a pit which was first excavated in the 1930s and later rediscovered. The bones of the feet were absent, and remains from the thorax underrepresented, and the remaining bones had scrapemarks, evidencing a de-fleshing treatment likely before cremation, including removal of the mandible and scraping of the skull.

Dating

Loschbour man lived over 8,000 years ago, making the skeleton the oldest human remains found in the country. The remains contained Y-DNA of the Haplogroup I2a-M423*. DNA testing (two molars presented good samples) indicates that

Western Hunter-Gatherer In archaeogenetics, the term Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG), West European Hunter-Gatherer or Western European Hunter-Gatherer names a distinct ancestral component of modern Europeans, representing descent from a population of Mesolithic hunter-gat ...

s like Loschbour man "contributed ancestry to all Europeans but not to near-Easterners".

Media, science

The results of the 2014 DNA testing allowed the Luxembourg Centre National de Recherche Archéologique and the Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art to make a 3-D reconstruction of the man. ''L'homme de Loschbour'' is a 2012 animated movie, seven minutes long, by Nic Herber. "Redonner vie à l’Homme de Loschbour" was a one-day conference at the National Museum of Natural History, which presented an overview of the results of recent investigations.

References

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External links