Introduction

Abstract

One hundred and sixty years ago, fossilized human remains were discovered in the Neander valley of north-west Germany. 1 Twenty-five years ago, Misia Landau published Narratives of Human Evolution, her structural analysis of human origin accounts. 2 Separating these events were the discoveries of thousands more hominid fossils and hundreds of thousands more stone tools. The interpretation of these remains posed a series of conceptual and methodological challenges for scholars, as they became focal points of interest for many established and nascent scientific disciplines. Anatomists, geologists, archaeologists and palaeontologists all approached the excavated material from different perspectives, and even members of the same disciplines did not themselves necessarily agree. Forceful debate within the academy was matched by intense media and public interest: people were able to follow in near real time via The Times and The Guardian as excavations and expeditions unearthed new material, while considering at greater leisure the lengthier elucidation of these discoveries by armchair or lab-stool savants.The stones and bones discovered both before and since 1856 have direct implications for the understandings of what constitutes humanity: their analysis and understanding