Loschbour man
The Loschbour man is a specimen of Homo sapiens from the European Mesolithic discovered in 1935 in Mullerthal, in the commune of Waldbillig, Luxembourg.
History
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. It is now at the National Museum of Natural History in Luxembourg City.Life
The Loschbour man was a hunter-gatherer, and the flint tools used for stalking and killing prey 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. According to DNA tests reported in 2014, the Loschbour man was male, and described as having an "intermediate" to light skin tone, brown or black hair, and likely blue eyes. In contrast to 90% of modern Europeans, he was lactose-intolerant. When he died, he was between 34 and 47 years old, c. tall, and weighed between.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.