How many bathrooms have Neanderthals in the tile?

In 2022, I was able to visit the excavation site Bilzingsleben, which is mentioned in the article, and can highly recommend a visit to everyone interested in science. The site itself is just a quarry, but they have built a museum right above the place where they found fossils of thousands of creatures. You can then stand over a control table like in the spaceship Enterprise and trigger 3D animations of those animals and humans in their natural environment on a large screen on the wall on other side over an excavation ditch. But the best thing was getting to know to the curator of the site. He himself took part in the excavation, published scientific articles about it and seems to know everything about the site, its excavation history and palaeological topics related to it. I was able to talk with him for more than an hour.<p>The excavation site is located about 20km north of Erfurt (Thuringia, Germany). In the summer it is open Weddensday to Sunday and on holidays from 10:00 to 17:00. For those with a camper-van: it is no problem to stay in their very quite car park for the night for free. Its Web-site can be found at <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.steinrinne-bilzingsleben.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.steinrinne-bilzingsleben.com&#x2F;</a> (in German).

In Bucharest we have an entire subway station tiled with marble containing countless very visible fossils [1], specifically of rudists [2]. Here are a few nice photos:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.descopera.ro&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;media&#x2F;401&#x2F;321&#x2F;5946&#x2F;15187502&#x2F;3&#x2F;politehnica-subway-station.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.descopera.ro&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;media&#x2F;401&#x2F;321&#x2F;59...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.descopera.ro&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;media&#x2F;401&#x2F;321&#x2F;5946&#x2F;15187502&#x2F;2&#x2F;politehnica-subway.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.descopera.ro&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;media&#x2F;401&#x2F;321&#x2F;59...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Politehnica_metro_station" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Politehnica_metro_station</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rudists" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rudists</a>

There is a concrete pour next to the place I lived as a child which was done around 1970. A cat walked through and my parents showed the traces to me when I was a small kid, explaining how fossiles were created.<p>Fast forward 35 years or so, I live 2 km from the place I was born after travelling the world and I went there with my own child to &quot;discover&quot; the steps again, together with the story about fossiles.<p>I then had my kid take my parents to that place when they were visiting so that he could show them the traces and explain how fossiles are formed.<p>Full circle of life :)

Somehow I find marble and travertine in things like hotels a bit depressing. It took millions of years to form and it&#x27;s a marvel of serendipitous geological processes. Then it gets sliced and stuck to a wall for a decade or two before another renovation or a demolition happens and it gets smashed up and thrown away.

<p><pre><code> To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?</code></pre>

Oh god, I couldn&#x27;t deal with having that in my floor; that tile would definitely be getting replaced.

Amazing... I have this stuff in my own bathroom, and assumed it was some sort of synthetically generated random pattern, e.g. a type of ceramic or concrete tile with coloring swirled in or something. To be honest, I find it a bit ugly and didn&#x27;t understand why anyone would design a tile to look like this.<p>Can&#x27;t wait to get home and actually look carefully. I suspect I&#x27;ll appreciate it a lot more knowing what it actually is.

my first read of this title was: &quot;how many bathrooms did neanderthals have?&quot; making me wonder &quot;neanderthals had bathrooms?&quot;

Would it be possible (even just theoretically) to discover fossils like this non-destructively via some form of scanning? If we would have a huge chunk of stone on a table, could we somehow tell if there is any humanoid bones in it without cutting it up?<p>I suspect the very low contrast between the fossil and the surrounding rock would mean that either we need a very sensitive sensor, very long exposures or likely both.

I believe statistically, you are almost certain when you are peeing in the bathroom to be peeing out some of the exact same water molecules that exact same Neanderthal who is in the tile peed out when they were alive.

Travertine Man is not on my Anthropology bingo card.

Dentist floored by Precarbonite Man?

I&#x27;m not an anthropologist, but I saw right away that it was a jawbone. How could anyone miss it?

Talk about the downtrodden.

This blows my mind because it reminds me of how we find dinosaurs!<p>I love time team, and I know it&#x27;s not even close to neanderthals. But I&#x27;ve grown accustomed to them finding human remains in soil. But this is in sedimentary rock! It&#x27;s like a fossilized human, sort of.

&gt; Dating of the travertine by Anne-Marie Lebatard and collaborators in 2014 suggests that the individual lived sometime between 1.6 million and 1.2 million years ago.<p>What the…? Am I misunderstanding something? I didn’t think human ancestry started so long ago.

TIL, fossils exist from &lt; O(1M+)ya<p>Also TIL, (from tangential reading) even dinosaur fossils contain original bone material from the organism, not just rock in the shape of the original bones.<p>Of course it makes complete sense in retrospect.

Good article.<p>I thought I was going to hear that some type of ceramic consisted in part of ground-up Neanderthal bones. I think I&#x27;d be unpleasantly surprised to find a human jawbone on the bathroom floor.

I couldn&#x27;t parse the title until I read the article.

Absolutely wild the number of people in the comments on the original Reddit thread who earnestly think OP should call the police to report human remains.

Yikes, seeing someone&#x27;s jawbone each day is off putting.<p>The odd ammonite would be sad, you&#x27;d think that this would be rejected on quality grounds.

This title made <i>absolutely no sense</i> until I read the article. Fascinating stuff.

Makes me sad to think of the fossils lost, but it&#x27;s also kind of inevitable.

<p><pre><code> &quot;And if you do happen find a jawbone in your bathroom, my suggestion is first to contact the local authorities. Sure, a fossil in travertine likely comes from hundreds of thousands of years ago. It isn&#x27;t a crime scene. But depending on your state or nation of residence, laws governing discovery of human remains on your property may be complicated and having the paperwork in order with the police, sheriff, or coroner is the first step for most investigations.&quot; </code></pre> No thanks. I&#x27;m not going to complicate my life with paperwork and police investigators because of a small piece of a might-be-a-fossil from Turkey.

Wow, I wasn&#x27;t aware that was a correct sentence.

This building has people in it.

I read that title and I was nearly convinced I was having a stroke.

They got civilised now, from caves to bathrooms.

I read this title early in the morning. Thought it said &quot;Netherlands&quot;, now that I&#x27;m reading it more awake, I&#x27;ll be honest when I say I&#x27;m not sure if Neanderthals is more or less comforting.