Boy do I miss that old cartoon! When I was a child, it came on TV on Saturday mornings along with other Hanna-Barbera cartoons such as Scooby Doo and had as its bumbling hero, a rather disheveled caveman. It was funny, silly, and original. What more could you want in a cartoon! Ah, but I digress.
My question for the day on Friday was "How long ago were people in Germany?" Well it depends most on what you mean by people. The creature they think is the most likely ancestor of modern man is the Homo heidelbergensis. This is a creature thought to have lived in this area between 600,000 to 400,000 years ago. The first remains of these people were found here in Germany in 1907 in a town called Mauer, near Heidelberg. Additional remains were found in a town called Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart as well as in France, Greece, and Italy. These people were hunters who used who used spears and stone tools to survive. There has been some evidence that they are also the first species to bury their dead and may have had some sort of language based on their bone structure.
Also in this area, there is quite a lot of evidence for the species for the famous Neanderthal man. These people date back to 130,000 years ago or older and were around until modern man began to emerge in Europe, about 40,000 to 35,000 years ago. These people were named after the German river valley in which they were first discovered that is near Düsseldorf. To properly pronounce this word, you have to remember that in German, there is no "th" sound like in "think" or "this", rather when you have a th together in a word, it is said with a soft "t" sound - kinda like when you whisper a "t" (not quite the crisp "t" of table"). The discovery of these remains were very important, because it marked the beginnings of the idea that man as we know it was linked to these early peoples and the field of paleontology came into being. Shortly after this finding, Darwin publish his groundbreaking On the Origin of Species, and evolution became a big idea.
Modern man remains have been found dating back to around 40,000 years ago in nearby Romania, Czech Republic, and France and were presumably over the entire region. Tool evidence, stonework, as well as cultural aspects (such as drawings) of these people have been found all over Europe. In nearby Spain at the Cave of Altamira and in France at Lascaux, there are some very famous caves that have drawings in them. Some date back to 18,000 years old.
There are quite a few museums across Germany that have displays or are entirely devoted to these pre-historic people in the region. In Mainz, there is the Central Romano-Germanic Museum which looks at prehistory dating all the way back 2.5 millions years ago. For a time, the famous Iceman was housed here. The Neanderthal Museum is located in Mettman in the valley it was named after near Düsseldorf. There is also the Blaubeuren Museum of Prehistory south of Stuttgart, and the Museum of Pre- and Early History, Werdringen Palace in Hagen also near Düsseldorf. These museums all offer a rich peak at the world so very long ago. Even with early people, Europe was again ahead of the area now known as the USA. Evidence for ancient people in our part of the world doesn't show up before 20,000 to 15,000 years ago. For a good read for adults or older kids on the fictional possibilities of some of these early inhabitants of Europe, check out Clan of the Cavebear by Jean Auel. It is really neat to think what their lives might have been like!
The words for today are valley: das Tal (or sometimes written as Thal if referring to German writings prior to 1901 when this spelling was changed. In both cases, it is pronounced as stated before like tahl where the t is a soft t which is between our "t" and "th" as in "this"), people: die Leute (loi teh), and human: der Mensch (mehnch).
The question for the day is "Do pirates still exist and what does Germany have to do with them?"
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
