Rhünda Skull

51.115488°N 9.406807°E / 51.115488; 9.406807

The Rhünda Skull
Common nameThe Rhünda Skull
Specieshomo sapiens sapiens
Age12000 ± 80 years BP
Place discoveredRhünda in North Hesse, Germany
Date discovered19 July 1956
Discovered byEitel Glatzer

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.

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 skull in the newly-eroded stream bed, about 80 centimetres (31 in) below the ground surface. The skull pieces were covered in calcareous sinter and surrounded by lime-rich tuff, loess, and basalt fragments.

History of Research

The find was passed on to Prof. Dr. Eduard Jacobshagen in the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology at the University of Marburg. On 26 August 1956, Prof. Jacobshagen present his research at the international congress 'Hundert Jahre Neanderthaler: 1856–1956 [a century of Neanderthals]' in Düsseldorf.[1] From his reconstruction of the skull, he postulated it belonged to the species Homo neanderthalensis, i.e. a Neanderthal.[2] This would mean the fossil was 30.000 years old. Furthermore, he thought the bones belonged to a female.

Heberer and Kurth from Göttingen University reconstructed the skull again and carried out fluorine and 14carbon dating on the surrounding material.[3][4][5][6][7] They suggested the skull belong to a 'modern' homo sapiens sapiens. Together with the 14carbon age of the calcareous sinter that surrounded the skull at 8,365 ± 100 BP,[8] 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 sent 2 g of the skull to the Centre for Isotope Research (Centrum voor Isotopen Onderzoek) at the University of Groningen. Using the accelerator mass spectrometry 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 period, at the beginning of the European Mesolithic. They also showed that the skull belonged to a man.[9][10]

The skull resides in the Museum of Hessian History in Kassel; there is a copy in the museum in Gensungen, close to Felsberg.

References
  1. von Koenigswald, G. H. R., ed. (1958). Hundert Jahre Neanderthaler: 1856–1956 [a century of Neanderthals: 1856-1956] (in German). Köln-Graz: Böhlau Verlag.
  2. Jacobshagen, Eduard (1957). "Der Schädelrest der Frau von Rhünda (Bezirk Kassel)" [The remains of the skull of the woman from Rhünda (Kassel area).]. Anatomischer Anzeiger (in German). Jena Elsevier. 104 (1–5): 64–87. ISSN 0940-9602. PMID 13435522.
  3. Heberer, Gerhard; Kurth, Gottfried (1960). "Über den Typus des pleistozänen Schädels von Rhünda (Hessen)" [On the type of the Pleistocene skull from Rhünda (Hesse)]. HOMO: Journal of Comparative Human Biology (in German). 11: 216–220.
  4. Heberer, Gerhard; Kurth, Gottfried (1962). "Fundumstände, relative Datierung und Typus des oberpleistozänen Schädels von Rhünda (Hessen)" [Conditions of discovery, relative dating and type of the Upper Pleistocene skull from Rhünda (Hesse)]. Anthropologie: 23–27.
  5. Kurth, Gottfried (1962). "Die Entzauberung des Rhünda-Neandertalers" [Demystification of the Rhünda Neanderthal]. Kosmos (in German). Stuttgart. 58: 465–469.
  6. Kurth, Gottfried (1962). "Die morphologische Einstufung menschlicher Fossilfunde und ihr Aussagewert für stratigraphische wie kulturgeschichtliche Datierungen und daraus Großzusammenhänge" [The morphological classification of human fossils and their value for stratigraphic and historical age dating and their context]. Anthropologie (in German). Brünn. 1: 29–32.
  7. Heberer, Gerhard; Kurth, Gottfried (1962). "Das Ende eines "Neandertalers"" [The end of a Neanderthal]. Homo (in German). 13: 152–161.
  8. Jacobshagen, V.; Münnich, K.O.; Vogel, J.C. (1962). "Das Alter des Schädels von Rhünda. III. C14-Datierung der Fundschicht" [The age of the skull from Rhünda. III. C-14 age dating of the find]. Eiszeitalter und Gegenwart (in German). 13: 138–140.
  9. Rosendahl, Wilfried (2002). "Neues zur Altersstellung des fossilen Menschenschädels von Rhünda (Schwalm-Eder-Kreis), Hessen" [New information on the fossil human skull from Rhünda (Schwalm-Eder District), Hesse]. Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt (in German). 32: 15–19.
  10. Rosendahl, Wilfried (2003). "Der Mann von Rhünda - ein neuer Eiszeitjäger aus Hessen" [The man from Rhünda - a new Ice Age hunter from Hessen]. Hessen-Archäologie (in German): 22–24.
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