5 101 x The first published specimen of Neanderthal man was found in the Neander valley in Germany in 1856. At first ably argued to have been from a kind of human 'not now known', it was quickly dismissed by most scholars as a pathological specimen of modern man. Only much later was its status as a predecessor of modern humans accepted.
# Neanderthal, skull
11 101 x A cave on a high rock ledge occupied by Neanderthal people around 55,000-35,000 BC, at first as a temporary butchering site, later as a campsite for several months of the year. Animal and bird bones suggest the people wore skins of fur animals decorated with feathers. Scattered human bones seem to indicate that cannibalism occurred.
# L'Hortus
12 101 x At the time when modern people colonized western Europe the Neanderthal inhabitants of this cave started making beads, grinding ochre for some form of decoration and making distinctive tools on blades, similar to but distinct from the tools of modern humans. This evidence suggests that Neanderthals adopted new ideas from the incoming modern people.
# Arcy-sur-Cure
8 101 x A rockshelter containing the buried remains of a number of Neanderthal people. Most interesting was the burial of a child whose head had been detached and placed separately. Above this grave was a stone slab, red ochre smeared on its underside, with eighteen shallow circular depressions laboriously carved into its top.
# La Ferrassie
6 101 x It was once generally believed that Neanderthal man rapidly died out when modern humans colonized Europe around 38,000 BC. Recent discoveries, however, show that some Neanderthals survived and adapted. For instance at Saint-CÈsaire, tools of the sort normally associated with modern humans were found with Neanderthal remains dated around 34,000 BC.
# Saint-CÈsaire
17 101 x The burial of a 9 year old Neanderthal boy at Teshik-Tash may have been deliberately surrounded by goat horns.
# Teshik-Tash, burial of boy surrounded by goat horns
9 101 x A cave site occupied by early Neanderthal people before 120,000 BC. Around the remains of two hearths were found rings of debris from stone tool making: some scholars say the pattern suggests skin tents, while others believe the rings formed as a result of the way the people were sitting as they worked.
# Lazaret
10 101 x Early Neanderthal people lived here around 180,000 BC, under a large rock overhang near the foot of a cliff. They had used this in their hunting, driving mammoth and woolly rhino over the cliff to their death. The people then collected meat and bones from their broken remains, neatly stacking the debris.
# La Cotte de St. Brelade
24 102 A By 50,000 BC, if not earlier, people had reached Australia in sufficient numbers to establish a viable breeding population ancestral to modern Aboriginals. Low sealevels made the crossing shorter than it is today, but there still remained 38 miles (60 km) of open sea between Australia/New Guinea and the South-East Asian mainland.
# Australia
16 101 x Several Neanderthal skeletons were buried at Shanidar. Pollen evidence suggests that flowers were deliberately placed on the body in one burial.
# Shanidar, Plan of burial with flower pollen
13 101 x A cave on the north African coast, occupied by Palaeolithic people for tens of thousands of years. Part of a bone whistle, the world's earliest known musical instrument, was found here, in deep deposits dated to at least 60,000 years ago.
# Haua Fteah
18 101 x Twenty-one skeletons of physically modern humans were discovered in the cave at Qafzeh, recently dated to around 100,000-90,000 BC. These may be the earliest deliberate burials of individuals, although at the much earlier site of Atapuerca (300,000 BC) in Spain, some thirty bodies were deliberately disposed of in a deep shaft.
# Qafzeh
25 101 x Two fossil footprints have recently been discovered at the South African site of Langebaan Lagoon, dated around 117,000 BC. These were indistinguishable from the footprints of modern people and, like the bones from Klasies River Mouth, are evidence for the existence of modern humans in this region earlier than anywhere else in the world.
