Oberkassel is a suburb in the Bonn municipal district of Beuel in Germany. It lies on the right bank of the Rhine on the edge of the Siebengebirge mountains. Oberkassel has about 7,200 inhabitants.
Oberkassel is a suburb in the Bonn municipal district of Beuel in Germany. It lies on the right bank of the Rhine on the edge of the Siebengebirge mountains. Oberkassel has about 7,200 inhabitants.
In 1914, workers in a quarry detected a grave with a 50-year-old man, a 20-25-year-old woman and a dog, which came to be called the Bonn–Oberkassel dog. Carbon-14 datings estimated an age between 13,300 and 14,000 years. A study of the mitochondrial genome sequences in 2013 showed that the animal is indeed Canis lupus familiaris , not a wolf. [1]
Oberkassel was first mentioned as Cassele in 722/723 and as Cassela in 1144. The name Oberkassel refers to a Roman fortification; in the course of time "Römerkastell" (Roman castle) became "Oberkassel". Oberkassel absorbed the previously separate settlements of Berghoven (mentioned for the first time in 873), Büchel (mentioned for the first time in 1202), Broich (mentioned for the first time in 1306) and Meerhausen (mentioned for the first time in 1442).
In 1870 the East Rhine Railway reached Oberkassel and crossed the Rhine by train ferry to the West Rhine Railway. The train ferry was abandoned in 1919.
Bonn-Oberkassel station is on the East Rhine Railway.
The Bonn Stadtbahn (city rail of Bonn) with its lines 62 and 66 serves three stations in Oberkassel: Oberkassel Nord (SWB), Oberkassel Mitte and Oberkassel Süd/Römlinghoven.
The Bundesstrasse 42 (federal highway 42) traverses the south-eastern part of Oberkassel within a 500 m (1,600 ft) long tunnel. It has an exit near Ramersdorf .
Oberkassel is home of several divisions of the DLR, the German Aerospace Center.
Oberkassel D999 and D998 [2] (Ok1 and 2 [3] ) are a set of Mesolithic human skeletons discovered from 14,000 and 13,000 years [2] [ page needed ] old deposits in a quarry. Jelinek et al. (1969) grouped these crania with Cro-Magnon under the name Homo sapiens fossilis alongside Vestonice, Brno, and Predmosti. [4] Typically, they are assigned to Homo sapiens , although a statue at Oberkassel is labeled as "Homo obercasseliensis" [5] and they were historically considered "close" to Neanderthals. [6] The two individuals comprise a male and female, [7] dog bones, and two bone and antler artworks. Being a Mesolithic double burial with domesticated dogs makes the site especially important. [8]
The burial was discovered in the quarry "Am Stingenberg", a popular basalt deposit where the double burial was discovered 99 m in a rubble dump near the base of a cliff. The initial report includes the burial and grave goods, a canine tooth, a reindeer, and a "bovid tooth" in a reddish layer with traces of charcoal. [6] Future human finds at the site are not impossible. [9] It was determined that the site was a place of burial and not storage, and that the hunters lived nearby in an overhang under the basalt wall. This would have provided a close location to bury their dead, but the isolated status of the double burial suggests that they did not like to lay their dead in their settlements. [10] The graves themselves were decorated in a large amount of red pigment and with careful stone arrangement. [6]
A dating given by Oxford in 1994 suggests an age of 12-11.35 ka, [11] a conclusion also reached by the LVR-Amt für Bodendenkmalpflege im Rheinland (Rhenish Office for the Preservation of Archaeological Monuments) through soil samples. In 2014, the 100th anniversary of the find, [12] genetics determined that the individuals were not as related as siblings and may be potentially helpful for Out-Of-Africa. [13] [14] They discovered a meaty diet with freshwater fish and mussels, [15] as well as plant gathering. They both grew up in different locations based on enamel isotopes. They ate closely related seeds from northern Scandinavia during childhood, suggesting that it served as a refugium for hunters. The woman had given birth at least once, and the man survived a fracture to the right ulna, and an injury to the left parietal that may have been an accident or a projectile, such as a slingshot. [13]
The skull of the woman is notable in having disintegrated sutures leading to mispositioning of the nasals and temporals as well as defects to the cranial base. It is 184 mm long, 129 mm in width, and 135 mm in height. The jaw apparatus is very well developed, the forehead is wider, the chin is strong, and the square orbits are large. The third right upper molar was missing in life and the molars bear less wear indicating a sooner eruption time, but otherwise the dentition was complete. The body of the woman was first suggested to be 1.55 m (~5'1 f) tall and 20 years old, but current estimates suggest 1.6-1.63 m (~5'2-5'3 f) in height and 25 years in age. The man was first considered strange because of the facial breadth and robusticity (assuming these traits are unique to Neanderthals). The male skull is 193 mm long, 144 mm wide, and 138 mm high. This individual was around 40-50 years of age, only retaining the final two molars (which sat at an incline) and an upper canine. The exposed dentin is black and the enamel is greatly worn on all remaining teeth, and the teeth not accounted for were all lost during life. Original height calculations suggested great physical strength and a stature of 1.6 m (~5'2 f), but current calculations recover 1.67-1.68 m (~5'4-5'5 f). [16] The man exhibits massiveness characteristic of upper Paleolithic people and also seen in Neanderthals. [17]
Robert Bonnet initially attempted classification of the Oberkassel burial, finding resemblance to the Neanderthals in the skull of the man and resemblance to the Cro-Magnon humans through the narrow nose, sloped rectangular orbits, angled mandible, pronounced chin, and low, long face. He suggested that this population was subject to introgression, as evidenced by the morphology of each individual. [6] Josef Szombathy (1920) first classified these hominins solely with Cro-Magnons, although recent research agrees that humans of this time were much more uniform than early racial classification suggests. Winfried Henke, who considers these specimens very important, investigated the burial in 1986 and especially focused on craniometric comparisons. He found "typical" European morphology, characterizing the man as "averagely robust" and the woman as "hyper-feminine type". Henke considered Oberkassel "decisive" as an ancestral role. [18] [19]
The two Oberkassel specimens (c. 14 kya) represent the earliest yet found evidence for Western Hunter-Gatherer ancestry (WHG). The Oberkassel ancestry was found to be also close to the Gravettian Arene Candide 16 genome. The observed maternal haplogroups are U5, while the Y-chromosome of the male specimen belongs to a subclade of I-M170. [20]
In 1914, grave goods were recorded from the burial and considered important to defining the cultural stage of the population. Franz Heiderich discovered an "animal" or "horse" head after quarry workers noted a "hair arrow" (initially thought to be a hairpin). [6] Made from antler, the animal head is a flat plate 8.5 cm long, 1 cm thick, and 3.4-4 cm wide and outlines the body, limbs, and head. The rear likely broke during excavation but it has not since been recovered. The piece was likely carved out of a larger material and engraved on both sides, identification as an antler is also possible. [10] most notably with hatching to denote the stomach and neck. [21] It is assumed to be an elk, similar to those of the Magdalenian found in France and England, and a probable part of the Federmesser culture; it was not wearable. [22] Also found was one of the oldest animal staffs. [23] Verworn misinterpreted the sculpture as a Magdalenian cut-out and as such assigned to Magdalenian IV, which was proven incorrect by radiocarbon dating and stylistic elements. [6] [24] Verworn correctly described an "unworked awl-shaped animal bone", which was created with the baculum of what is likely a brown bear. [19]
The domestic dog presence at the site is the oldest undisputed record of this canine in the fossil record. [25] Günter Nobis (1986) published a report on the local animals at the burial, revising Steinmann (1919). Some of the original fauna include domestic dogs, the brown bear, red deer, and aurochs/steppe bison (the bovines being too fragmentary to cement an identification). [26] Nobis erroneously suggested a lynx and roe deer, but they may be dog remains instead. Previously, the dog remains were suggested to be wolf. This specimen was one in a data pool that concluded that the species was domesticated 32-18 ka. [27] [25]
Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family that includes all the great apes. This process involved the gradual development of traits such as human bipedalism, dexterity, and complex language, as well as interbreeding with other hominins, indicating that human evolution was not linear but weblike. The study of the origins of humans involves several scientific disciplines, including physical and evolutionary anthropology, paleontology, and genetics; the field is also known by the terms anthropogeny, anthropogenesis, and anthropogony.
Early modern human (EMH), or anatomically modern human (AMH), are terms used to distinguish Homo sapiens that are anatomically consistent with the range of phenotypes seen in contemporary humans, from extinct archaic human species. This distinction is useful especially for times and regions where anatomically modern and archaic humans co-existed, for example, in Paleolithic Europe. Among the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens are those found at the Omo-Kibish I archaeological site in south-western Ethiopia, dating to about 233,000 to 196,000 years ago, the Florisbad site in South Africa, dating to about 259,000 years ago, and the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco, dated about 315,000 years ago.
Homo heidelbergensis 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 1950 as H. e. heidelbergensis, but towards the end of the century, it was more widely classified as its own species. It is debated whether or not to constrain H. heidelbergensis to only Europe or to also include African and Asian specimens, and this is further confounded by the type specimen being a jawbone, because jawbones feature few diagnostic traits and are generally missing among Middle Pleistocene specimens. Thus, it is debated if some of these specimens could be split off into their own species or a subspecies of H. erectus. Because the classification is so disputed, the Middle Pleistocene is often called the "muddle in the middle".
Homo is a genus of great ape that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses only a single extant species, Homo sapiens, along with 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.
Neanderthals became extinct around 40,000 years ago. Hypotheses on the causes of the extinction include violence, transmission of diseases from modern humans which Neanderthals had no immunity to, competitive replacement, extinction by interbreeding with early modern human populations, natural catastrophes, climate change and inbreeding depression. It is likely that multiple factors caused the demise of an already low population.
The Steinheim skull is a fossilized skull of a Homo neanderthalensis or Homo heidelbergensis found on 24 July 1933 near Steinheim an der Murr, Germany.
Human taxonomy is the classification of the human species within zoological taxonomy. The systematic genus, Homo, is designed to include both anatomically modern humans and extinct varieties of archaic humans. Current humans have been designated as subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, differentiated, according to some, from the direct ancestor, Homo sapiens idaltu.
Prehistoric France is the period in the human occupation of the geographical area covered by present-day France which extended through prehistory and ended in the Iron Age with the Roman conquest, when the territory enters the domain of written history.
The Neanderthal genome project is an effort of a group of scientists to sequence the Neanderthal genome, founded in July 2006.
Feldhofer 1 or Neanderthal 1 is the scientific name of the 40,000-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 1 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.
Early human migrations are the earliest migrations and expansions of archaic and modern humans across continents. They are believed to have begun approximately 2 million years ago with the early expansions out of Africa by Homo erectus. This initial migration was followed by other archaic humans including H. heidelbergensis, which lived around 500,000 years ago and was the likely ancestor of Denisovans and Neanderthals as well as modern humans. Early hominids had likely crossed land bridges that have now sunk.
Paleolithic Europe, or Old Stone Age Europe, encompasses the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age in Europe from the arrival of the first archaic humans, about 1.4 million years ago until the beginning of the Mesolithic around 10,000 years ago. This period thus covers over 99% of the total human presence on the European continent. The early arrival and disappearance of Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis, the appearance, complete evolution and eventual demise of Homo neanderthalensis and the immigration and successful settlement of Homo sapiens all have taken place during the European Paleolithic.
In paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans or the "Out of Africa" theory (OOA) is the most widely accepted model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans. It follows the early expansions of hominins out of Africa, accomplished by Homo erectus and then Homo neanderthalensis.
The multiregional hypothesis, multiregional evolution (MRE), or polycentric hypothesis, is a scientific model that provides an alternative explanation to the more widely accepted "Out of Africa" model of monogenesis for the pattern of human evolution.
Neanderthals are an extinct group of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. The type specimen, Neanderthal 1, was found in 1856 in the Neander Valley in present-day Germany.
The Skhul and Qafzeh hominins or Qafzeh–Skhul early modern humans are hominin fossils discovered in Es-Skhul and Qafzeh caves in Israel. They are today classified as Homo sapiens, among the earliest of their species in Eurasia. Skhul Cave is on the slopes of Mount Carmel; Qafzeh Cave is a rockshelter near Nazareth in Lower Galilee.
The Rhünda Skull is a fossil human skull that was found just outside the village of Rhünda in North Hesse, Germany. It is dated to the Magdalenian, about 12,000 years old.
The Goyet Caves are a series of connected caves located in Belgium in a limestone cliff about 15 m (50 ft) above the river Samson near the village of Mozet in the Gesves municipality of the Namur province. The site is a significant locality of regional Neanderthal and European early modern human occupation, as thousands of fossils and artifacts were discovered that are all attributed to a long and contiguous stratigraphic sequence from 120,000 years ago, the Middle Paleolithic to less than 5,000 years ago, the late Neolithic. A robust sequence of sediments was identified during extensive excavations by geologist Edouard Dupont, who undertook the first probings as early as 1867. The site was added to the Belgian National Heritage register in 1976.
The Bonn–Oberkassel dog was a Late Paleolithic dog whose skeletal remains were found buried alongside two humans. Discovered in early 1914 by quarry workers in Oberkassel, Bonn, Germany, the double burial site was analyzed by a team of archaeologists from the University of Bonn. It was around 7.5 months old at death, 40–50 cm (16–20 in) tall at the shoulder, and weighed 13–18 kg (29–40 lb), suggesting a slender build similar to West Asian wolves or some modern sighthounds.
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)The two 14 ka Oberkassel individuals mark the earliest presence of WHG ancestry north of the Alps, which we therefore rename the Oberkassel cluster (hereafter, Oberkassel cluster or ancestry), using the name of the oldest reported individual to date carrying such ancestry with more than one-fold coverage, for consistency4. On the basis of f4-statistics, we find that individuals assigned to the Oberkassel cluster are closer to the Arene Candide 16 genome than any other Epigravettian-associated group from Italy (Supplementary Data 2.F). ... Oberkassel cluster is dominated by mtDNA haplogroup U5 and Y-chromosome haplogroup I
