In 1844, Charles Darwin wrote a letter to his close friend Joseph Hooker in which he confessed that he was becoming more and more doubtful of the predominating immutability of species idea (Burkhardt, 1996). He was not alone. Since the start of the 19th century, intellectuals had been questioning the idea that species were fixed in the form in which God had created them (Pettitt, 2006). In 1859, Darwin published his famous On the Origin of Species where he introduced the revolutionary idea of Natural Selection as the driving force behind evolution (Pettitt, 2006). It was into this intellectual landscape that the first human fossil landed when it made its grand debut in August of 1856.
Discovered by workers in a small cave in the Neander Valley, the incomplete skeleton was later passed on to Hermann Schaaffhausen, an anatomy professor at the University of Bonn. Shaaffhausen was an evolutionist who disagreed with the idea that species were fixed in time, having published a paper on the evolution of species a few years before the arrival of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (Regal, 2004). After careful examination, Schaaffhausen noted that the skeleton was unusual in that it was heavily built with bowed legs, and that it had a flat skullcap with a receding forehead and prominent brow ridges (Figure 1). In addition, the bones had large muscle scars where the muscle had once attached to the bone, indicating that the individual had been extremely robust and muscular (Schaaffhausen, 1858). As an evolutionist, Schaaffhausen reasoned that the skeleton was an ancient human (Regal, 2004). Being unlike anything he had seen, Schaaffhausen decided to present his findings at the Natural History Society meeting in Kassel. What ensued was a great debate on the origin of mankind.
Opposition to Schaaffhausen’s evolution-based ideas came in the form of Rudolf Virchow, a prominent pathologist. Virchow was a non-evolutionist who vehemently opposed the growing militarism in Germany, which had stemmed from the belief that evolution had led to the superiority of the German race (Regal, 2004). He proposed that the skeleton was that of a modern human with severe rickets or arthritis, as evident of the bowed legs (Regal, 2004). Another prominent figure, August Franz Mayer, opposed Schaaffhausen’s ideas and instead reasoned that the skeleton belonged to an individual of the Cossack Army that had passed by the Neander Valley in the early 1800s (Tattersall, 2009). Mayer had never been on good terms with Schaaffhausen, and he argued that if the skeleton was an ancient human evolved from the great apes, it should have vestiges of the sagittal crest characteristic of the great apes (Figure 2; Tattersall, 2009).
As a result of this opposition, Schaaffhausen’s findings were not prominent in academia until a few years later when it was realized that several fossils previously found in other regions matched the fossil from the Neander Valley (Regal, 2004). This realization essentially demolished the idea that the Neander Valley skeleton was a diseased modern individual, and William King subsequently classified the fossil as Homo neanderthalensis to differentiate it from modern humans (King, 1863). Conveniently framed within a period of great scientific development, the early debate surrounding the Neander Valley fossil is an example of how conflicting views pushed scientific development forward. The spotlight thereafter turned to the debate of whether H. neanderthalensis was a separate species or an ancient precursor to modern humans, and as Darwin eloquently put it, “light will be shed on the origin of Man” (Darwin, 1859).
Works Cited
Bento, C., 2009. Neanderthal 1 skullcap Homo neanderthalensis side view. [image online] Available at: <http://australianmuseum.net.au/image/Neanderthal-1-skullcap-Homo-neanderthalensis-side-view> [Accessed 16 November 2013].
Burkhardt, F., 1996. Charles Darwin’s Letters: a Selection. Cambridge: University Press.
Darwin, C.R., 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray.
Gore, P., 2006. Chimpanzee skull (Pan troglodytes) vs. human skull.[image online] Available at: <http://facstaff.gpc.edu/~pgore/geology/geo102/cenozoic.htm> [Accessed 16 November 2013].
King, W., 1863. The Neanderthal skull. Anthrop. Rev., 1, pp.393-94.
Pettitt, P., 2006. Homo neanderthalensis. Before Farming, 4, pp.1-3.
Regal, B., 2004. Human evolution: A guide to the debates. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.
Schaaffhausen, H., 1858. On the crania of the most ancient races of man. Müllers Archiv., 1858, p. 453.
Tattersall, I., 2009. The fossil trail: How we know what we think we know about human evolution. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.