Ehringsdorf primeval man

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Remnants of the Ehringsdorf "primitive men", Museum of Prehistory and Early History of Thuringia, Weimar

The Ehringsdorfer prehistoric men are the remains of a total of seven “prehistoric men” who have been found since 1908 in the travertine quarries of the Ilm valley on the edge of Ehringsdorf , a district of Weimar . Best known was the complete skullcap found in 1925 with associated female skeletal remains.

Find history

An intact Paleolithic layer was discovered for the first time in 1907 at the site in the quarries near Ehringsdorf . 1908–1913 the first human skull bones were discovered, in 1914 a lower jaw in the Kämpe quarry. In 1916, parts of an upper body skeleton, a lower jaw, teeth and part of the upper jaw of a child were found. On September 21, 1925, the famous skullcap was discovered in the Fischer quarry. Ernst Lindig and his son Kurt Lindig took over the rescue.

It is the fossil remains of a 20 to 30 year old woman from the Eem warm period (126–115,000 years before today) or the next older warm period (250,000 ± 50,000 years before today). There are different information about the dating of the find, as the correlation with the Eem warm period is controversial as a result of radiometric dating . Arguments in favor of dating older than the Eem warm age provided data from uranium-thorium dating . The low terrace height above today's Ilm, in harmony with other travertine deposits in the Thuringian Basin ( e.g. Taubach , Belvederer Allee in Weimar, Burgtonna ), provides the best argument for dating to the Eem warm period. The most clearly pronounced terrace of the Saale cold period is in the Thuringian Basin mostly about 20 meters above today's floodplain. Since the Thuringian Basin lies south of the inland ice of the Saale Ice Age, the effects of glacial processes, especially terrace levels, are difficult to interpret here, especially for the late Middle Pleistocene .

If the older age is correct, the find is a little younger than the "primitive man of Steinheim" and falls into the era where the European representatives of the genus Homo are either later called Homo heidelbergensis or "Pre- Neanderthals ". Emanuel Vlček, who investigated the hominid remains between 1978 and 1982, describes features of both the archaic Homo sapiens (which according to current knowledge has not yet immigrated to Europe) and the Neanderthal man. Today, Neanderthal traits are seen in the foreground. The brain volume of the complete skull is 1450 cm 3 .

The Silexspitze from Weimar-Ehringsdorf was found in 2014.

Environment and find landscape

Feuersteinspitze from Weimar, Museum of Prehistory and Early History of Thuringia, Weimar

The remains of the Ehringsdorf prehistoric man belong to a number of fossil sites and archaeological sites that were found in and around Weimar . Other important sites in the Weimar urban area are in the city center (sites “Parktravertin” in Ilmpark and “Belvederer Allee”) and in the Taubach district . In Oßmannstedt there is a scientifically significant site in the vicinity, while smaller sites are practically in the entire district of Weimarer Land . The noticeable accumulation in this area is explained by the fact that Weimar lies exactly on the so-called flint line of the Elster Ice Age , where the terminal moraine of the first Scandinavian inland freezing caused an accumulation of flint transported over the surface . In addition, the travertine rock typical of this area (the so-called Ilmtal travertine) favored the conservation of stone artefacts and bones.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Lindig: The Paleolithic Man of the Ilm Valley Skeletal remains from the travertine of Weimar-Ehringsdorf. Vimaria Verlag Fritz Fink, Weimar 1934.
  2. ↑ Altermann, M. 1995, Ehringsdorf: The floor in the upper part of the "Pariser". In: D.Mania , M. Altermann u. D. Rau, paleo soils and stratigraphy of the Middle and Young Quaternary in the Central German dry area. Seat u. Exc. Working group paleopedology 25.-27. May 1995, Jena.
  3. ^ Wolf Dieter Heinrich: On the stratigraphic position of the vertebrate faunas from the travertine sites of Weimar-Ehringsdorf and Taubach in Thuringia . ZfGeol.Wiss. 3, 1031-1055, Berlin.
  4. ↑ Dietrich Mania: On the Quaternary geology of the central Elbe-Saale area with special consideration of the Ehringsdorf and Bilzingsleben sites (with a contribution by M. Altermann). 1997, Jena.
  5. ↑ Mallik, R., N. Frank, A. Mangini et al. GA Wagner 2001, Precise Th / U dating of archaeologically relevant travertine sites in Thuringia. In: GA Wagner and D. Mania (eds.), Early People in Central Europe - Chronology, Culture, Environment. Aachen 2001, 77-90.
  6. ^ Lothar Eißmann , Fundamentals of the Quaternary Geology of Central Germany. - In: Lothar Eißmann, Thomas Litt (ed.): The Quaternary Central Germany . in: Altenburger Naturwissenschaftliche Forschungen 7, 1994. pp. 55-136
  7. ↑ Emanuel Vlček, Fossil finds from Weimar-Ehringsdorf. Weimar monographs z. Prehistory and Early History Vol. 30, 1993
  8. ^ Emanuel Vlček 1999, Homo finds from Bilzingsleben and Weimar-Ehringsdorf. Hominid Evolution (Ed. Hermann Ullrich), 156-165, Edition Archaea, Gelsenkirchen.
  9. ↑ Gustav Eichhorn, The paleolithic finds from Taubach in the museums of Jena and Weimar. Jena (Fischer, 1909).