Lady of Kelsterbach

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Lady von Kelsterbach is the name for a skull roof that was discovered in 1952 in the Willersinn-Mönchwaldsee gravel pit in Kelsterbach, Hesse, on a terrace on the Main River and interpreted as the fossil remains of a woman. With a now controversial radiocarbon dating of 31,200 ± 600 BP (when calibrated, corresponds to a calendar age of at least 34,000 BC), the skull was considered the oldest evidence of the Cro-Magnon man , the earliest “ modern man ” in Europe , for a number of years .

Today the 40,500 year old skull Oasis 2 from the Peştera cu oasis ( German : "Bone Cave" , Romania) is the oldest Homo sapiens in Europe.

The discovery

Main bank near Kelsterbach

The layer of finds is the so-called t (6) terrace of the Main, a local name for the “Obere Niederterrasse ” (the terrace of the upper Vistula Ice Age ) of the river. The site was on the northwest bank of the gravel pit. The location of the find in the river gravel suggests that the skull fragment was driven through the river together with the gravel, so it came to lie relatively coincidentally where it was found. The site had a number of accompanying finds , but the same applies to them. Findings were not observed or not recorded, so the archaeological context of the findings is extremely sparse.

A second ice age skull find, 'Kelsterbach-2', is said to be available at Mönchwaldsee.

Age determination

The 14 C dating of the find mentioned at the beginning was carried out by the anthropologist Reiner Protsch , who was legally convicted in 2009 for various forgery offenses. The dating of Protsch must be regarded as worthless today, as the laboratory was not operational in the 1970s. Nevertheless, the layer context - the so-called t (6) terrace of the Main - may indicate a Pleistocene age. In addition, there are two 14 C data from Clemens Rainer Berger from the UCLA Radiocarbon Laboratory (University of Los Angeles ): With the laboratory number UCLA-2361 , an amino acid sample of the Kelsterbach skull was dated a second time according to Berger and Protsch, namely to 29,000 ± 1525 BP, while a mammoth bone from a layer immediately above the skull site has been dated to 23,675 ± 869 BP (UCLA-2359). In the same UCLA Radiocarbon Laboratory , two other skulls found in Germany were dated: the Paderborn-Sande find at 25,650 ± 1300 BP ( UCLA-2360 ) and the putative " Neandertal - Cro-Magnon - Hybrid " skull from Hahnöfersand at 33,200 ± 2990 BP (UCLA-2363). However, both skulls are - as evidenced by new dating - from the Holocene and contributed significantly to the elucidation of R. Protsch's misconduct. The considerable deviations of the last-mentioned skull dates from reality show that the two Kelsterbach dates from UCLA - as they came about with the participation of Protsch - cannot serve as evidence to support the Frankfurt dating Fra-5 .

The former head of the 14 C laboratory at the University of Cologne , Bernhard Weninger, who previously worked at R. Protsch at the University of Frankfurt, pointed out with regard to the evaluation of the Frankfurt dating that he did not use calibration parameters for realistic 14 C data until 1981 created. Until then, the Protsch laboratory had been a “ Potemkin village ”, Weninger said in Spiegel . As a result, the Frankfurt dating from 1978 is scientifically worthless.

Today's rating

Since Protsch became aware of numerous incorrect dating of anthropological finds and the initiation of public prosecution investigations against him in 2004, the skull of the Lady von Kelsterbach, along with other " fossils ", has not been found. This is another reason why the dating is questioned. The University of Frankfurt am Main does not rule out theft by institute members, as several duplicate keys were still in circulation after Protsch's suspension. The publication of photos of another skull fragment, which was kept in the same cupboard as the Lady von Kelsterbach, prompted the University of Frankfurt to examine legal action against Protsch again.

The Frankfurt geologist Arno Semmel confirmed in 2009 the reliability of the 1978 age classification published with him as a co-author; the dating agrees with the quaternary geological findings of the gravel pit. The Frankfurt paleoanthropologist Friedemann Schrenk does not rule out the age classification of around 30,000 years either, but considers it pointless to speculate as long as the fossil has disappeared.

Against the assessment of the Kelsterbach skull as an Ice Age fossil, it can be argued that finds in river gravels do not necessarily have to be stratified , as repeated relocation processes can lead to mixing of such terrace gravel. Therefore, no statement can be derived from the proximity of the mammoth bones alone and only a new AMS direct dating of the skull could clarify the facts.

See also

literature

  • Peter Blänkle. In: Senckenbergiana biol. 64 (1984), p. 241 ff.
  • Peter Blänkle. In: A human skull from the Paleolithic from Kelsterbach, Groß-Gerau district , Wiesbaden 1993.
  • Fritz-Rudolf Herrmann u. Albrecht Jockenhövel: The prehistory of Hesse. Konrad Theiss Verlag Stuttgart, 1990, ISBN 3-8062-0458-6 , p. 420 f.
  • Reiner Protsch von Zieten, Axel von Berg: In: Collegium Anthropologicum (2002) p. 162 f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The date bears the laboratory number of the Frankfurt 14C laboratory Fra-5
  2. ↑ Reiner Protsch, Arno Semmel: On the chronology of the Kelsterbach hominids, the oldest representative of Homo sapiens sapiens in Europe. ( Memento from March 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Ice Age and Present. Volume 28, 1978, pp. 200-210. doi: 10.3285 / eg.28.1.19
  3. ^ A b c Martin Street, Thomas Terberger and Jörg Orschiedt : A critical review of the German Paleolithic hominin record. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 51, No. 6, 2006, pp. 551-579, doi : 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2006.04.014 ; Full text (PDF), p. 71 ( Memento from February 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Erik Trinkaus et al .: An early modern human from the Peștera cu Oase, Romania . In: PNAS . Volume 100 (20), 2003, pp. 11231-11236, doi : 10.1073 / pnas.2035108100 . - 34,000 to 36,000 “ 14 C years” correspond to approximately 40,500 calendar years.
  5. ^ Erik Trinkaus et al .: Early modern human cranial remains from the Petera cu Oase, Romania. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 45, 2003, pp. 255-259.
  6. ↑ Protsch / Semmel (1978) report on a mammoth molar . R. Protsch, A. Semmel: On the chronology of the Kelsterbach hominids, the oldest representative of Homo sapiens sapiens in Europe. ( Memento from March 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Ice Age and Present. Volume 28, 1978, pp. 200-210. doi: 10.3285 / eg.28.1.19
  7. ^ R. Protsch von Zieten and A. von Berg: New Upper Paleolithic Finds of Neanderthal and H. Sapiens Sapiens From the Provinces of Rheinland-Palatinate and Hessia, Germany. In: Hubert Maver, Pavao Rudan (ed.): Collegium Antropologicum. 13th Congress of the European Anthropological Association, Zagreb, August, 2002. Coands, Volume, Supplement, 2002, pp. 162 f. (Can be found on the web as a full-text PDF under the file name hrcak.srce.hr/file/44417.)
  8. ↑ a b c spiegel.de of October 11, 2004: University of Frankfurt: Anthropologist an impostor? Online version from Der Spiegel issue 42/2004
  9. ↑ Reiner RR Protsch: Radiocarbon Dating of Bones. In: Michael R. Zimmerman, J. Lawrence Angel (Eds.): Dating and Age Determination of Biological Materials. Croom Helm Ltd., Beckenham 1986, p. 29, ISBN 0-7099-0470-3 , excerpts from Google Books
  10. ↑ a b Rainer Berger, Reiner Protsch: UCLA RADIOCARBON DATES XI. Radiocarbon, Vol. 31, No. 1, 1989, pp. 55-67 (PDF online; 1.1 MB)
  11. ^ Henke, W., Protsch, R .: The Paderborn Calvaria: a diluvial Homo sapiens. Anthropolog No. 36, 1978, pp. 85-108
  12. ^ Günter Bräuer : The morphological affinities of the Young Pleistocene frontal bone from the Elbe estuary at Hahnöfersand. Magazine for Morphologie und Anthropologie 71, 1980, pp. 1-42
  13. ↑ T. Terberger, M. Street, G. Bräuer: 2001. The human skull remnant from the Elbe near Hahnöfersand and its significance for the Stone Age in Northern Germany. Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 31, pp. 521-526
  14. ↑ hr-online.de of October 19, 2009: Science thriller - "Old lady" stolen out of revenge? by Volker Siefert. (Website no longer available)
  15. ↑ hr-online.de from January 25, 2010: Does skull forger have an old lady? by Volker Siefert. (Website no longer available.)
  16. ↑ Arno Semmel and Frank Wolf: No doubt about the age of the lady from Kelsterbach. November 19, 2009
  17. ^ Rhein-Main-Zeitung of the FAZ No. 57 of March 9, 2010, p. 40: "The cabinet of Professor Seltsam"