Kreis Mettmann

The Neanderthal museum strikes a good balance between not dumbing down the subject matter yet simultaneously managing to appeal to children and/or Americans by providing lots of visual display.

The exhibition starts of informing you about how the Neanderthal came to be discovered and what the implications were for the scientific world (Origin of Species was published just two years after the Neanderthal was discovered here) . It then moves on to focus on the environment and how modern Homo Sapiens (us!) have by tacked natural selection and that there will, in time, be painful consequences for doing so - an over reliance on antibiotics for example.

I liked everything about the exhibition. That is apart from the 'what would the Neanderthals look like today part', which basically consisted of a five foot wax model of Jack Straw.Les mer