Common name | Engis 2 |
---|---|
Species | Neanderthal |
Age | c. 35,350 years (aged c. 3) |
Place discovered | Flemalle, Liege, Belgium |
Date discovered | 1829 |
Discovered by | Philippe-Charles Schmerling |
Engis 2 refers to part of an assemblage, discovered in 1829 by Dutch physician and naturalist Philippe-Charles Schmerling in the lower of the Schmerling Caves. The pieces that make up Engis 2 are a partially preserved calvaria (cranium) and associated fragments of an upper and a lower jaw, a maxillary bone and an upper incisor tooth of a two to three year old Neanderthal child. The Schmerling Caves are situated just north of the Belgian municipality Engis, whence the name of this group. [1] In 1833 Schmerling described [2] and publicized the find, which included animal bones and stone tools. Recognizing their old age, he associated them with the "Ethiopian Type" of the diluvial period. [3] Although it was not recognized as such until 1936, the publication represents the first scientific description of a Neanderthal fossil. [4]
Originally misclassified as "modern", the fossil received little attention after its publication in the 19th century as it was compared to Engis 1 - the almost perfectly preserved skull of an adult Homo sapiens . In 1758, Carl Linnaeus had published the 10th edition of his work Systema Naturae in which Homo sapiens as a species name was introduced to the public, yet without a thorough diagnosis and without a precise description of the species-specific characteristics. [5] As a result, any criteria by which a fossil of the species Homo sapiens could be classified into and distinguished from the genus Homo did not exist in the early 19th century. [6]
Even Thomas Henry Huxley, a supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution, saw in the 1863 findings of the Engis cave a "man of low degree of civilization" and also interpreted the Neandertal 1 fossils of the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte unearthed in 1856 as belonging within the range of variations of modern man. [7] Additionally, the skull of an infant Neanderthal and an equally old child of anatomically modern humans are of far greater resemblance than their respective adult skulls. The vast majority of the anthropologists of the 19th and early 20th century considered all hominid fossils as belonging to representatives of early "races" of modern man. Hence it was incorrectly believed that the modern man's skull Engis 1 must be related to the child's skull Engis 2. [8]
Two radiocarbon dates are available for Engis 2. However, the earlier result of 26,820 ± 340 radiocarbon years before present (BP) was considered to be too young by the authors and likely to be a result of contamination, so has been discarded. The more accurate date is 30,460 ± 210 radiocarbon years BP, which corresponds to 34,590–36,110 years BP after calibration. [9] The assignment of Engis 2 to Homo neanderthalensis and Engis 1 to Homo sapiens was primarily based on anatomical and chronological comparisons as Engis 2 was recovered in the context of Neanderthal Mousterian artefacts. [10]
In 1986, cut marks were found on the top of the skull of Engis 2, [11] which were later identified as to be preparation damage " formed during restoration of the vault, moulding striae formed when mold part lines were incised into the fossil and profiling striae formed when craniograms were made with sharp steel instrument tips." [12] The findings are preserved at the Collections de Paléontologie Animale et Humaine of the University of Liège. The bone fragments called Engis 3 have gone missing. [13] The evolutionary origin of an ulna (forearm bone) fragment called Engis 4 discovered in 1872 is unclear; it has to date not been associated with a specific taxon. [14] [15] [16]
Milford Howell Wolpoff is a paleoanthropologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan and its museum of Anthropology. He is the leading proponent of the multiregional evolution hypothesis that explains the evolution of Homo sapiens as a consequence of evolutionary processes and gene flow across continents within a single species. Wolpoff authored the widely used textbook Paleoanthropology, and co-authored Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction, which reviews the scientific evidence and conflicting theories about the interpretation of human evolution, and biological anthropology's relationship to views about race.
Homo is a genus of great ape that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses the extant species Homo sapiens and a number of extinct species classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans. These include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. The oldest member of the genus is Homo habilis, with records of just over 2 million years ago. Homo, together with the genus Paranthropus, is probably most closely related to the species Australopithecus africanus within Australopithecus. The closest living relatives of Homo are of the genus Pan, with the ancestors of Pan and Homo estimated to have diverged around 5.7-11 million years ago during the Late Miocene.
Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinship lines within the family Hominidae, working from biological evidence and cultural evidence.
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The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is a research institute based in Leipzig, Germany, that was founded in 1997. It is part of the Max Planck Society network.
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Archaic humans is a broad category denoting all species of the genus Homo that are not Homo sapiens. Among the earliest modern human remains are those from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, Florisbad in South Africa (259 ka), and Omo-Kibish I in southern Ethiopia. Some examples of archaic humans include H. antecessor (1200–770 ka), H. bodoensis (1200–300 ka), H. heidelbergensis (600–200 ka), Neanderthals, H. rhodesiensis (300–125 ka) and Denisovans.
Feldhofer 1 or Neanderthal 1 is the scientific name of the 39,900-year-old type specimen fossil of the species Homo neanderthalensis, discovered in August 1856 in a German cave, the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte, in the Neandertal valley, 13 km (8.1 mi) east of Düsseldorf. In 1864, the fossil's description was first published in a scientific magazine and officially named. Neanderthal was not the first Neanderthal fossil discovery. Other Neanderthal fossils had been discovered earlier, but their true nature and significance had not been recognized, and, therefore, no separate species name was assigned.
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Balangoda Man refers to hominins from Sri Lanka's late Quaternary period. The term was initially coined to refer to anatomically modern Homo sapiens from sites near Balangoda that were responsible for the island's Mesolithic 'Balangoda Culture'. The earliest evidence of Balangoda Man from archaeological sequences at caves and other sites dates back to 38,000 BCE, and from excavated skeletal remains to 30,000 BC, which is also the earliest reliably dated record of anatomically modern humans in South Asia. Cultural remains discovered alongside the skeletal fragments include geometric microliths dating to 28,500 BC, which together with some sites in Africa is the earliest record of such stone tools.
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The Schmerling Caves are a group of caves located in Wallonia on the right bank of the stream called the Awirs, near the village of Awirs in Flémalle, Belgium. The caves are notable for their past fossil finds, particularly of hominins. They were explored in 1829 by Philippe-Charles Schmerling, who discovered, in the lower cave, the remains of two individuals, one of which, now known as Engis 2, was a fossil of the first Neanderthal ever found; the other was a Neolithic homo sapiens. Also known as Trô Cwaheur or Trou Caheur, this lower cave has since collapsed. A third cave was destroyed because of work on the adjacent quarry, the Ancienne Carrière des Awirs.
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