Homo steinheimensis

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Homo steinheimensis (original), State Museum for Natural History Stuttgart
Memorial stone at the site
Memorial column near the site

Homo steinheimensis ("prehistoric man of Steinheim") is the name of a fossil skull that was found on July 24, 1933 in Steinheim an der Murr in the middle of a 15 meter high gravel wall of the Sigrist gravel pit by Karl Sigrist during gravel mining. The skull probably belonged to a woman around 25 years old who lived in the Holstein Warm Period , more than 300,000 years ago.

The original find is now in the museum at the Löwentor in Stuttgart in a steel cabinet. A replica is exhibited in the Urmensch Museum in Steinheim.

Taxonomic classification

The "prehistoric man of Steinheim" is a single find. The term "Homo steinheimensis" was first used by Fritz Berckhemer in 1936 and is to be understood as a mere reference to the place where the fossil was found, but does not identify a species , so it is not a taxon . The skull shows features of both Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals . Most paleoanthropologists put it as Homo heidelbergensis and is probably a transitional form from Homo heidelbergensis to Neanderthals, for which the term “pre-Neanderthals” is sometimes used. This taxonomic classification is supported by the fact that the inner ear of the fossil has a feature that distinguishes Neanderthals and Homo sapiens particularly sharply: The position of the semicircular canals of the inner ear in the temporal bone of the skull base is similar to that of the Neanderthal, while the semicircular canals of the older Homo erectus are similar to be closer to homo sapiens .

Until the late 1980s, the fossil was occasionally referred to as Homo sapiens steinheimensis , as the Neanderthals, known as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis , were also placed as a subspecies alongside modern humans ( Homo sapiens sapiens ). Today, however, the paleoanthropologists assume that Neanderthals and humans developed independently of one another from a common ancestor (this is usually referred to as Homo erectus ) and are therefore to be regarded as two separate species: Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens .

The discovery

Even before this find, many archaeological objects from the Pleistocene , such as the bones of elephants, giant deer , rhinos and wild horses, were found in the gravel pit and scientifically evaluated. Therefore, the employees in the quarry were already sensitized to possible bone finds of a representative of the genus Homo . When Sigrist saw a bone-bright spot in the overburden wall, they immediately sent for a paleontologist from the Stuttgart Natural History Cabinet (today: State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart ). Fritz Berckhemer arrived on the same day and examined the find that was still hidden in the wall.

The next day, Berckhemer began the careful exposure together with the taxidermist Max Böck. It was immediately clear, based on the shape and dimensions of the skull, that it was not a monkey, as was initially assumed, but a century find of a human skull from the Pleistocene. The skull was roughly cleaned, hardened and plastered and thus safely brought to the Württemberg Natural History Collection , today's State Museum of Natural History .

The evaluation of the find

The sex of a woman was deduced from the relatively thin-walled and generally graceful-looking skull, which has a brain volume of around 1,100 cm³. The wear and tear and the breakthrough of the dentition suggested an age of around 25 years. The lesion, interpreted as a large injury on the left forehead, led to the assumption that the woman had been killed with a blunt weapon. According to this assumption, the head was then separated from the trunk and the occipital hole was greatly enlarged, which is said to have served the purpose of getting to the woman's brain, as was suspected, in order to eat it in a cult act ( see cannibalism in the previous and early history ). An investigation using microscopic methods, however, came to the conclusion that it could not have been human impact.

Cause of death

The exact cause of death is unclear and three possibilities have been assumed so far:

  • The first interpretation of the skull fracture in 1933 led to the assumption of a violent death
  • Damage due to relocation and transport in the sediment could also explain the lesion (1996).
  • The brain tumor found in 2003 can be ruled out as the cause of death.

The oldest evidence of a brain tumor

After a re-examination of the skull in 2003, a working group at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen published a work showing that the owner of the skull suffered from a meningioma , a tumor in the spider's tissue ( arachnoid ).

The slow-growing tumor was 51 mm x 43 mm x 25 mm in size and 29 ml in volume. It may have caused a headache. Neurological deficits such as hemiparetic or para- paretic (as coat edge syndrome) are conceivable. Due to the generally suppressive and slow growth of meningiomas, it is also possible that the woman did not have any neurological deficits at all. It cannot be clearly reconstructed whether the tumor, given this size and the smaller skull volume of Steinheim people, must ultimately also be considered the cause of death.

Since meningiomas are very rare (two to nine diseases per 100,000 people today, depending on age), this discovery on a fossil skull in a small population (10,000 are assumed) is a specialty. It is the earliest evidence of a meningioma and also the first evidence of representatives of the older species of the genus Homo .

Life and environment

No further human artifacts were found in the finds in Steinheim, no further bones and no tools such as B. stone tools, bone tools or the like. Nevertheless, it can be assumed that the woman from Steinheim was also able to manufacture and work with such tools. Proof of this is z. B. a find of about the same age by Swanscombe , the "swanscombe man" , where some hand axes from the culture of the Acheuleans were found.

See also

literature

  • Fritz Berckhemer : A human skull from the diluvial gravel of Steinheim ad Murr. In: Anthropologischer Anzeiger . Volume 10, 1933, pp. 318-321. ( First description of the find)
  • Karl Dietrich Adam : The man of the past. Guide through the Urmensch Museum Steinheim an der Murr . ISBN 3-8062-0404-7 .
  • Karl Dietrich Adam: The prehistoric man from Steinheim an der Murr and his environment. A picture of life from a quarter of a million years ago. In: Yearbook of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum. Volume 35, 1988, pp. 3-23.
  • Karl Dietrich Adam: Homo steinheimensis: The discovery of the prehistoric man from Steinheim an der Murr 75 years ago. A landmark in human history. Verlag Bernhard A. Greiner, 2009, ISBN 978-3-86705-053-1 .
  • Raimund Waibel: Urmensch Museum - Steinheim an der Murr . Special print Schwäbische Heimat , 1994/2.
  • Homo steinheimensis. For the 60th anniversary of the discovery and the 25th anniversary of the Urmensch Museum in Steinheim an der Murr. In: Contributions to local history . 43. Steinheim an der Murr, 1993
  • Reinhard Ziegler: 75 years of Homo steinheimensis . In: History sheets from the Bottwartal. Vol. 11, Großbottwar 2008 (Ed .: Historischer Verein Bottwartal e.V.)
  • Reinhard Ziegler: 75th anniversary of Homo steinheimensis. On the research history of the prehistoric man's skull in the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart. In: Preservation of monuments in Baden-Württemberg. Volume 37, 2008, No. 3, p. 171 f., Full text (PDF)
  • Hermann Prossinger et al .: Electronic Removal of Encrustations Inside the Steinheim Cranium Reveals Paranasal Sinus Features and Deformations, and Provides a Revised Endocranial Volume Estimate. In: The Anatomical Record (Part B: New Anat.). Volume 273B, No. 1, 2003, pp. 132–142, doi: 10.1002 / ar.b.10022 , full text (PDF, 651 kB)

Web links

Commons : Homo steinheimensis  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Homo steinheimensis  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Karl Dietrich Adam: The primeval man of Steinheim an der Murr and his environment - a life picture from the time a quarter of a million years ago. Page 4 ff.
  2. ↑ Steinheim primeval man foerderverein-urmensch-museum.de
  3. ^ Fritz Berckhemer : The prehistoric human skull from the interglacial river gravel of Steinheim an der Murr. In: Researches and Advances. News bulletin of the German science and technology. Volume 12, No. 28, Berlin 1936, pp. 349-350.
  4. ^ Jean-Jacques Hublin : The special evolution of the Neanderthals. Spectrum of Science , July 1998, page 56 ff.
  5. ↑ Reinhard Ziegler: 4 million years of man. Spectrum of Science, May 1999, page 130 ff.
  6. ↑ Chris Stringer : The Origin of Our Species. Penguin / Allen Lane, 2011, p. 60. ISBN 978-1846141409 .
  7. ↑ Jörg Orschiedt : Manipulation of human skeletal remains. Taphonomic processes, secondary burials or cannibalism? Tübingen 1999, p. 60.
  8. ↑ Jörg Orschiedt: On the question of the manipulation of the skull of the "Homo steinheimensis" . In: Joachim Hahn , Ingo Campen, Margarethe Uerpmann (Eds.) Traces of the hunt - The hunt for traces. Festschrift Prof. H. Müller-Beck (= Tübingen Monographs on Prehistory, 11), Tübingen 1996, pp. 467–472.
  9. ^ A b c Alfred Czarnetzki, Erwin Schwaderer, Carsten M. Pusch: Fossil record of meningioma. In: Lancet. Volume 362, Number 9381, August 2003, p. 408, ISSN  1474-547X . doi : 10.1016 / S0140-6736 (03) 14044-5 . PMID 12907030 ; see also Tübingen researchers find skull tumor in early humans for the first time , press release of the University of Tübingen, August 11, 2003, and the CT cross-sectional image of the skull (archived website).

Coordinates: 48 ° 58 ′ 6 ″  N , 9 ° 16 ′ 34 ″  E