Is man the eternal migrant?: Neanderthal Museum explores history of human movement
Photo courtesy of the Neanderthal Museum
A special exhibit in the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, Germany, entitled “Two Million Years of Migration,” explores the history of human movement and reveals that today’s migration routes are uncannily similar to those from thousands of years ago.
Regardless of how you categorize yourself in relation to migration, the exhibition provides some light-bulb moments as it tries to make clear that, ultimately, we are all migrants. “Our objective is to show that migration is an intrinsically human phenomenon going back millions of years,” said Gerd-Christian Weniger, the director of the Neanderthal Museum.
Prof. Gerd-Christian Weniger is the director of the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann
The special exhibition is accompanied by a special research project entitled “Our Way to Europe” that has been carried out in cooperation with the Neanderthal Museum since 2009. In it, scientists from the universities of Aachen, Cologne and Bonn explore the movement of people from Africa to Europe. Where did they come from? And where did they go?
One route that seems to always have played a central role leads from the Middle East via present-day Turkey to eastern Europe. The Strait of Gibraltar came to be used as a migratory bridge only much later.
The scientists noted that these ancient migration patterns astonishingly resemble today’s movements of migrants. “When we discovered this in 2015, it became clear to us that we need to get involved in the political discussion, and that we need to add our point of view and our insight into human migration to this debate,” Weniger stated in an interview with DW. In his view, migration cannot be stopped – not even by erecting barriers.
KJ