Germany
Johann Carl Fuhlrott
Regina-Pacis-Weg 3, 53113 Bonn, Germany
Fuhlrott obtained his doctorate from the University of Bonn in 1830.
Regina-Pacis-Weg 3, 53113 Bonn, Germany
Fuhlrott obtained his doctorate from the University of Bonn in 1830.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fossile-Mensch-Aus-Neanderthal-Menschengeschlechts/dp/1167430298/?tag=prabook0b-20
1865
anthropologist archaeologist educator paleontologist scientist
Johann Fuhlrott was born on December 31, 1803, in Leinefelde-Worbis, Germany. His parents were the innkeeper Johannes Philipp Fuhlrott and his wife Maria Magdalena. His parents had died by the time he was ten and he was raised by his uncle, the Catholic priest Carl Bernhard Fuhlrott in Seulingen.
Fuhlrott obtained his doctorate from the University of Bonn in 1830.
After graduating, Johann went to Elberfeld, where he became a science teacher and subsequently vice-director of the Realschule. He won modest recognition as a naturalist, publishing geological descriptions of the hills and caves in the Rhineland region between Düsseldorf and the Wupper River.
In August 1856, Fuhlrott received an assortment of fossilized bones found by two quarry workers in the Feldhofer cave of the Neander Valley. These men had uncovered what they thought to be the skeleton of a cave bear and were carelessly discarding it when the quarry owner persuaded them to save some of the remains for the Elberfeld teacher. Portions of the skull and pelvis, along with the larger limb bones, were delivered to Fuhlrott.
He studied the specimens and began to suspect that they were not bear bones but the remains of an ancient and primitive form of human being. Its physical build smaller than that of modern man, this creature with low, retracted forehead had plodded along on bowed legs, its head and chest hunched forward. Fuhlrott recognized the importance of this find and rushed to the grottoes in time to retrieve some ribs, the right radius, the left ulna, and part of the right scapula - all that remained of the probably perfect skeleton.
At Fuhlrott’s request Hermann Schaaffhausen of Bonn examined the fragments and confirmed his diagnosis of their antiquity. Schaaffhausen presented a preliminary description of the fossils at the Lower Rhine Medical and Natural History Society on 4 February 1857. Fuhlrott was invited to discuss them fully before the Natural History Society of the Prussian Rhineland and Westphalia on 2 June of that year. Addressing this august body at Bonn, Fuhlrott was dismayed at the reaction to his find. Rudolf Virchow and Carter Blake dismissed the bones as the remains of an idiot ravaged by rickets in youth and arthritis in later life. They refused to credit any great age to them.
Reaction to his speech was hostile, but Fuhlrott and Schanffhausen refused to quit their positions in the extensive controversy that ensued. They appealed to the public for support and managed to attract attention beyond the borders of Germany. They gained an important ally in Sir Charles Lyee, who journeyed from England in 1860 to investigate the discovery site of the disputed fossils. His visit to Fuhlrott convinced Lyell that the specimen was authentically human, Homo neanderthalensis. But it was not until after Fuhlrott’s death and the discovery of fossil men at Spy, Belgium, and at Gibraltar that opposition to the notion of Neanderthal man was finally silenced.
In 1835 Johann married Josepha Amalia Kellner, with whom he had six children.
