A number of bones uncovered in the summer of 1856 by quarry workers removing limestone from a pit in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany. The bones were discovered in a small cave about 18 meters (about 60 feet) above the river, and some of them were saved for a local scientist named J. K. Fuhlrott. Fuhlrott knew enough anatomy to recognize the bones as those of a man, but a man very different from anyone living in the 19th century. The bones of the limbs were extraordinarily thick as compared to those of modern humans, and the skullcap had a very thick brow ridge and a slanted forehead features that seemed to Fuhlrott to indicate that the remains were very old. He concluded that the bones were those of a person (now known as homo sapiens neanderthalis) who had died in the biblical Flood a man of the Deluge, or “Deluge Man.”
The idea of Deluge Man was connected to the 18th-century concept of caastrophism. The French naturalist Baron Georges cuvier promoted the idea that great natural catastrophes preceded periods of extinction. New species were divinely created or migrated from unaffected areas after each catastrophe. Cuvier’s theory won support from religious thinkers because it seemed to support the biblical view of history. However, as the 19th century progressed, Cuvier’s views fell into disfavor. After the publication of Charles darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), Deluge Man was discarded in favor of a different concept: humankind as a species that had evolved from other, related species over a long period.