The Neanderthal in the mirror

Nobody alive today remembers a time before we knew the Neanderthals. Yet their discovery happened very recently in the wider context of human history – barely five generations back. 1856 is the official Neanderthal “ground zero”, when bones materialised in a cloud of clay clods and black powder from the Feldhofer cave, near Dusseldorf in Germany.

This was the first recognised find. Nearly three decades earlier, a Neanderthal skull-top had been discovered in a Belgian cave, but its unusual anatomy was less obvious because it was a child. In 1848 yet another skull emerged, this time from near the Forbes military battery on Gibraltar. This nearly became the “type” fossil for the species. But its true significance only became clear just after the Feldhofer find had been given a scientific moniker: Homo neanderthalensis, after the Neander “thal” (valley), where it was discovered.

But the Forbes skull (1), which belonged to a Neanderthal woman who lived around 90,000 years ago, does have a first to its name, as the subject of the earliest reconstruction of a hominin fossil. On 19 July 1864, just a few days after the skull had arrived in England by ship, biologist Thomas Huxley sketched “Homo Hercules columarum” (2), or Pillars of Hercules man, a reference to the classical name for the Rock of Gibraltar. Based on the skull, Huxley envisioned ape-like features including a hairy pelt (skin) and a short tail. Strikingly, there are long feet with opposable