YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

November 4, 2009

An encounter with Neanderthal

I’m over here in Oberhausen, a rural town of Germany. I departed Narita airport just about noon on last Sunday by Scandinavian Airlines that I took for the first time in years to have arrived in Copenhagen after eleven hours and twenty minutes flight. I transited there for Dusseldorf after four and half hours wait. Mr. Akinori Hashimoto who has been staying in Köln for one and half months kindly came to the airport to meet me.

He was a kind of plump the last time I saw him and now he was even a little bigger. Two men of father and son in ages took a midnight train for fifteen minutes’ ride to Oberhausen. As this town is located between Berlin and Frankfurt on latitude, it is quite chilly indeed. Even for this cold I didn’t take out a jacket from a suitcase to have arrived at NH hotel by bluffing in a “fat” jacket of my own under my inner cloth.

The reason I came here is because of attending International Space Exploration Coordinating Group (ISECG) scheduled to be held on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. The objective of the meeting this time is to discuss how to tackle space exploration from the viewpoint of education and public relations, for which reason I was probably chosen because I had an experience of having been engaged in campaign activities for “NOZOMI”, “HAYABUSA”, “KAGUYA” and others.

I will have to do my presentation for thirty minutes on Tuesday. I haven’t prepared for anything yet without any helpful suggestions so far, so I have to make out a presentation draft from now by using PC power point with only my imagination of atmosphere how the meeting is going to be. Only my concern was if I could successfully connect to Internet but I was quite relieved for it was easily made through. I inquired at the front desk about general information of local area, and then I was pretty surprised to hear that there in the vicinity was “Neander” where I wanted to visit from a long time ago.

How could I miss such a heaven-sent opportunity because I was enthusiastically interested in cultural anthropology in my boyhood and so I got up early in Monday morning by inviting Mr. Hashimoto come with me. We first mistook the train for the opposite direction and yet we kept cool and level to change for the right train to have arrived in Dusseldorf by appreciating the beautiful rural landscape especially for Germany. It took about fifteen minutes from there by S-Bahn running through mountain track covered by yellow colored leaves, thus we made it to “Neander” at last.

After disembarked from the train we walked gentle down-slope for southwest and then appeared in our sights what looked like a museum at valley floor. Oh, I see this is “Thal (valley)” of Neander. Then that must be Neanderthal museum. However, we were afraid it would be closed on Monday. We were right; it was closed. We looked through entrance door glass at the inside to have seen a standing figure of Homo neanderthalensis under the dim light, of which picture I had a petty idea to take in my camera. From there we started walking again looking for the excavation site of the bones.

It was nearly noon, so we had a launch at a bijou restaurant nearby. There was “regional beer of Neander” in a menu, which was only “taste like” actually not much different from others. The label of the bottle showed a picture of “Home neanderthalensis”, though. We were very much satisfied with herring-pickles that tasted pretty good.

The workers engaged in mining work for limestones in Feldhofer cave of Neander valley in 1856 discovered human bones that were well preserved in good conditions. It was reported that characteristic features of cavepersons were apparently seen such as low skull bones and supraorbital prominence. Agitated excitement that followed is well known in human history. On the big rock of the seemingly first discovery site was thrust a metal arrowhead (more like spear).

It is assumed that in the place where many cavepersons lived were walking around primitive humans whose body physique would never looked like the ones of modern people like ourselves. We hurried back to hotel shortly before dinnertime. We had spaghetti pepperoncino at Italian restaurant “Giu” recommended by the hotel.

My good memory of visiting the long yearned place for a long time, which was realized by chance, was discontinued by my suddenly recalled thought of “preparation for tomorrow’s presentation”. It was just half past four in the morning when I went to bed after long hours’ laborious work.

I welcome your comments on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp

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