Loschbour man

49°45′46″N 6°16′44″E / 49.762696°N 6.278976°E / 49.762696; 6.278976

Loschbour Man
Diedc. 6000 BC (aged 34-47)
now Waldbillig, Echternach, Luxemburg
Body discovered7 October 1935 by Nicolas Thill
Resting placeLuxembourg City, Canton of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

The Loschbour man (also Loschbur man) is a specimen of Homo sapiens from the European Mesolithic discovered in 1935 in Mullerthal, in the commune of Waldbillig, Luxembourg.

History

The rock shelter where the skeleton was found

The remains of the Loschbour man, nearly complete, were discovered on 7 October 1935 under a rock shelter in Mullerthal on the banks of the Black Ernz river. It was found by amateur archaeologist and school teacher Nicolas Thill.[1] It is now at the National Museum of Natural History in Luxembourg City.[2]

Life

Loschbour man was a hunter-gatherer, and the flint tools used for stalking and killing prey (wild boar and deer) were found by his body. He was found to have been one of the late Western Hunter-Gatherers, soon to be supplanted by more numerous groups of Early European Farmers from Anatolia and Southwestern Europe.[3] According to DNA tests reported in 2014, the Loschbour man was male,[4] and described as having an "intermediate" to light skin tone (90%), brown or black hair (98%), and likely blue eyes (56%).[5] In contrast to 90% of modern Europeans, he was lactose-intolerant.[6] When he died, he was between 34 and 47 years old, c. 1.6 m (5 ft 3 in) tall, and weighed between 58 and 62 kg (128–137 lb).[1]

The cremated remains of another person, likely an adult woman, were found nearby, in a pit which was first excavated in the 1930s and later rediscovered. The bones of the feet were absent, and remains from the thorax underrepresented, and the remaining bones had scrapemarks, evidencing a de-fleshing treatment likely before cremation, including removal of the mandible and scraping of the skull.[7]

Dating and genetics

Genetic ancestry of hunter-gatherers dated between 14 ka and 9 ka (WHG highlighted)

Loschbour man lived more than 8,000 years ago, making the skeleton the oldest human remains found in Luxembourg.[6] He was found to have carried the Y-DNA haplogroup I2a-M423*.[8] DNA testing on two molars indicated the population to which the Loschbour man belonged (Western Hunter-Gatherers), "contributed ancestry to all Europeans but not to near-Easterners".[9]

Media, science

The results of the 2014 DNA testing allowed the Luxembourg Centre National de Recherche Archéologique and the Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art to make a 3-D reconstruction of the man.[4] L'homme de Loschbour is a 2012 animated movie, seven minutes long, by Nic Herber.[10] "Redonner vie à l’Homme de Loschbour" was a one-day conference at the National Museum of Natural History, which presented an overview of the results of recent investigations.[11]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Kieffer, Sophie (17 September 2014). "Le "premier Luxembourgeois" a livré plus de secrets que prévu: Le nouveau visage de l'homme de Loschbour". Luxemburger Wort (in French). Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  2. ^ "L'Homme du Loschbour, le plus ancien Luxembourgeois, à la base d'un succès scientifique" (in French). Monarchy of Luxembourg. 20 October 2014. Archived from the original on 29 November 2018. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  3. ^ Rutherford, Adam (2018). A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes. The Experiment. pp. 72–74. ISBN 9781615194940.
  4. ^ a b "L'homme de Loschbour était définitivement un homme!" (in French). RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg. 17 September 2014. Archived from the original on 29 November 2018. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  5. ^ https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41559-019-0871-9/MediaObjects/41559_2019_871_MOESM1_ESM.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  6. ^ a b "L'Homme de Loschbour dans Nature" (in French). National Museum of Natural History (Luxembourg). 17 September 2014. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  7. ^ Jones, Amy Gray (14 April 2017). "Cremation and the Use of Fire in Mesolithic Mortuary Practices in North-West Europe". In Cerezo-Román, Jessica; Wessman, Anna; Williams, Howard (eds.). Cremation and the Archaeology of Death. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192519092.
  8. ^ "I-M423*". YFull. Vadim Urasin. 2012.
  9. ^ Lazaridis, Iosif; et al. (17 September 2014). "Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans". Nature. 513 (7518): 409–413. arXiv:1312.6639. Bibcode:2014Natur.513..409L. doi:10.1038/nature13673. hdl:11336/30563. PMC 4170574. PMID 25230663.
  10. ^ "L'Homme de Loschbour bei Festival nominéiert" (in French). RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg. 3 May 2012. Archived from the original on 29 November 2018. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  11. ^ "Conférence: Redonner vie à l'Homme de Loschbour (29/1/2015)" (in French). National Museum of Natural History (Luxembourg). January 2015. Retrieved 28 November 2018.