Neanderthal Museum

Neanderthal Museum

Neanderthal Museum
Location of Neanderthals Museum in Mettmann, Germany
Established	1996
Location	Mettmann, Germany  Germany
Coordinates	51°13′37″N 6°57′02″E / 51.2269°N 6.9505°E / 51.2269; 6.9505
Type	Anthropological
Visitors	170,000
Website	Neanderthal Museum

Neanderthal Museum is a museum in Mettmann, Germany. Located at the site of the first Neanderthal man discovery in the Neandertal, it features an exhibit centered on human evolution. The museum was constructed in 1996 to a design by the architects Zamp Kelp, Julius Krauss and Arno Brandlhuber and draws about 170,000 visitors per year. The museum also includes an archaeological park on the original discovery site, a Stone Age workshop, as well as an art trail named "human traces". All signs in the museum as well as the audio guide offered by the museum are available in German and English.

The architectural plan for the museum was chosen through a competition held in the spring of 1993 in which 130 participants from Germany and other countries participated. The design submitted by Professor Günter Zamp Kelp, Julius Krauss and Arno Brandlhuber was chosen as it represented the importance of the location. The museum was established on 10 October 1996 near the site where the renowned Neanderthal fossil was found. Its multimedia exhibition was upgraded in 2006. Continuing donations, endowment or testamentary of funding are helpful for further development of the museum and for acquisition of many more exhibits. The former hotel Neanderthaler Hof was demolished to make room for the museum's extension.

The museum gives a background of the migration of people from the savannas to the modern cities with emphasis of Neanderthals. Their life size models are cast and exhibited on the basis of fossils excavated from archaeological sites. The exhibits are displayed in the four floors of the building which are interconnected through a spiraling ramp. At the beginning of the ramp, in the first section, there are exhibits on the history of the Neanderthal named "A valley and its Secret", which provides information on relics of the skeleton of the Neanderthal. The next exhibit, “A journey through time”, is about crucial stages of human history. Based on the main subject "Evolution of Humankind", the thematic areas spread over five sections exhibit sequentially the "Life and Survival", "Tools and Knowledge", "Myth and Religion", Environment and Nourishment" and "Communication and Society".

The museum has a unique collection of casts of the original human fossils which represent the evolution of the hominids in general and that of the Neanderthals in particular. This cast collection, prepared on the basis of finds from various excavated sites in the world, was facilitated by the donations given by Alfred Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation.