The Rhünda Skull is a fossil human

skull The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, th ...

that was found just outside the village of Rhünda in

North Hesse North Hesse (german: Nordhessen) describes the northern part and historical heart of the German federated state of Hesse. The region is – unlike the name Lower Hesse – not a historical territory and also has no established, standard and offic ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. It is dated to the Magdalenian, about 12,000 years old.

Discovery

On the night of 19 July 1956 there was a heavy storm in North Hessen. This caused the stream northwest of Rhünda, the Rhündabach, to strongly erode the field that is now the Rhünda sports ground. On the morning of 20 July, a villager found parts of a hominid

in the newly-

eroded Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is disti ...

stream bed, about below the ground surface. The skull pieces were covered in

calcareous sinter Calcareous sinter is a freshwater calcium carbonate deposit, also known as calc-sinter. Deposits are characterised by low porosity and well-developed lamination, often forming crusts or sedimentary rock layers. Calcareous sinter should not be conf ...

and surrounded by lime-rich

tuff Tuff is a type of rock made of volcanic ash ejected from a vent during a volcanic eruption. Following ejection and deposition, the ash is lithified into a solid rock. Rock that contains greater than 75% ash is considered tuff, while rock ...

, loess, and

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90 ...

fragments.

History of Research

The find was passed on to Prof. Dr. Eduard Jacobshagen in the Department of

Anatomy Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the 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 science, having it ...

and

Anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

at the

University of Marburg The Philipps University of Marburg (german: Philipps-Universität Marburg) was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Protestant university in the wor ...

. On 26 August 1956, Prof. Jacobshagen present his research at the international congress 'Hundert Jahre Neanderthaler: 1856–1956 century of Neanderthals in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...

. From his reconstruction of the

, he postulated it belonged to the

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

''Homo neanderthalensis'', i.e. a

Neanderthal Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While the ...

. This would mean the

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

was 30.000 years old. Furthermore, he thought the bones belonged to a female. Heberer and Kurth from

Göttingen University Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The o ...

reconstructed the skull again and carried out fluorine and ¹⁴carbon dating on the surrounding material. They suggested the skull belong to a 'modern' ''homo sapiens sapiens''. Together with the ¹⁴carbon age of the

that surrounded the skull at 8,365 ± 100 BP, the owner of the skull was thus firmly believed to have lived in the late to early Preboreal. This correlates to the Mesolithic period. In 2002

Wilfried Rosendahl Wilfried Rosendahl (born 1966) is a German bioarchaeologist, geoscientist, and cultural manager, general director of the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museums in Mannheim, and honorary professor at the Institute of History at the University of Mannheim. ...

sent 2 g of the skull to the Centre for Isotope Research () at the

University of Groningen The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; nl, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, abbreviated as RUG) is a public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands. Founded in 1614, the university is th ...

. Using the

accelerator mass spectrometry Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a form of mass spectrometry that accelerates ions to extraordinarily high kinetic energies before mass analysis. The special strength of AMS among the mass spectrometric methods is its power to separate a r ...

¹⁴carbon method, they dated the sample at 10,000±80 years BP. After calibration (with INTCAL 98), this gave an age of 10,015–9,747 BP, which correlates to the Magdalenian-

Azilian The Azilian is a Mesolithic industry of the Franco-Cantabrian region of northern Spain and Southern France. It dates approximately 10,000–12,500 years ago. Diagnostic artifacts from the culture include projectile points (microliths with ro ...

period, at the beginning of 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 ...

. They also showed that the skull belonged to a man. The skull resides in the Museum of Hessian History in Kassel; there is a copy in the museum in Gensungen, close to

Felsberg Felsberg (german: rock hill, link=no) may refer to: * Felsberg, Hessen, a town in Schwalm-Eder-Kreis, Hessen, Germany * , a part of Überherrn, Landkreis Saarlouis, Saarland, Germany * Felsberg (Odenwald), a mountain in the Odenwald hills, Landk ...

References

External links

Museum in which the Rhünda skull is kept (in English)

Information about Prof. Eduard Jacobshagen (in German)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rhunda Skull Upper Paleolithic Homo sapiens fossils