Published: April 28, 2021 at 12:46 pm 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 Düsseldorf in Germany. Advertisement 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: