# Neanderthals of the Neander Valley (-50000)

URL: https://germany-history.com/timeline/-50000-neanderthals-of-the-neander-valley
Location: Neandertal, near Düsseldorf
Categories: main-event

In 1856 quarrymen in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf found a skullcap and bones that the teacher Johann Carl Fuhlrott recognised as something unusual. Scientists soon identified them as belonging to an extinct kind of human, named Homo neanderthalensis after the valley. Neanderthals lived across Ice Age Germany for hundreds of thousands of years before disappearing around 40,000 years ago.

## Why it matters
The discovery founded paleoanthropology and made 'Neanderthal' a word known worldwide.

## Sources
- [Wikipedia – Neanderthal 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_1)
- [Wikipedia – Neanderthal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal)
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica – Neanderthal](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Neanderthal)