Neanderthalensis skull from La Chapelle

At the 3 th of August in 1908 a fairly complete Neanderthal skeleton was discovered in Bouffia Bonneval, La Chapelle aux Saints in France. Unfortunately the finder Marcellin Boule drew a completely false picture of this human species in his publication by a number of misinterpretations of the find. That is still responsible for the negative image of the Neanderthal man.

The fossils discovered are about 50.000 years old. They belonged to an old man. They show some age and disease caused by degenerative changes and Boule misinterpreted them as primitive and ape-like.

This original cast of the skull shows clearly these degenerations including a huge bed tooth loss in both jaws.

This cast is handcoloured and made of Epoxi. The colours might be a little differend than shown on the pictures. Because of the handcraft every cast is unique.