2023-07-23 09:38:00
It was July 16, 1993. During archaeological digs at the Scladina Cave site in Sclayn, a student intern named Claire Curvers made an astonishing discovery. She unearths a human-looking half-mandible. She immediately informed the excavation director of the Andennaise Archeology Association, Dominique Bonjean. The archaeologist does not believe his eyes but remains cautious. The object is entrusted to a laboratory for expertise. While waiting for the results, the nights are difficult for Dominique Bonjean, a great enthusiast of prehistory and particularly Neanderthals…
The reconstruction of “Sclayn’s child”, visible at the Lighthouse. ©EdA
“You hit the jackpot!”. This sentence was pronounced by Michel Toussaint on July 20, 1993, during a meeting of experts on the Scladina site. At the time, the man was a paleoanthropologist at the Department of Archeology of the Ministry of the Walloon Region, specializing in the study of Neanderthal bones. This half-mandible, which will subsequently provide the oldest human DNA in the world, is the most important anthropological discovery of the 20th century in Belgium, and since that of Spy in 1886. Dominique Bonjean is on cloud nine.
It’s a girl !
For thirty years, dozens of scientists, attached to Belgian and foreign laboratories, have studied the mandible from every angle, as well as the other bone fragments and teeth discovered subsequently (i.e. 19 elements of the same set). This work has made it possible to paint the portrait of an 8-year-old Neanderthal girl who lived on the banks of the Meuse 110,000 years ago. Genetic studies have given a face and a body to “Sclayn’s child”, named Raga by Verviers illustrator René Hausman. A moving reconstruction of Raga sits today at the heart of the museum dedicated to Scladina, the Lighthouse, and Andenne.
The precious fossil… ©EdA
An anniversary visit
This Sunday, July 16, an exceptional “anniversary” visit was organized at the Scladina cave. Dominique Bonjean, still director of excavations currently, lingered for a long time on the precise place where the extraordinary discovery took place. He was accompanied by Claire Curvers, the former intern, inventor of the half-mandible. Both shared the same emotion, as if this little girl was part of their family. They were accompanied by Philippe Frison, an excavator for more than thirty years, who discovered a molar of the child. “Moi, confided the latter, I confess to feeling more emotion when I discover a stone carved into a tool. I imagine the work done by our distant ancestor and his motivation.”
In the evening, at the Lighthouse, Dominique Bonjean presented a small, richly illustrated 62-page book recounting the research carried out over the past thirty years at Scladina. Information intended for the general public, popularization of the data collected in the scientific monograph published in 2014, The Scladina I-4A Juvenile Neandertal. The book is available at the Lighthouse for €5.
To conclude this anniversary day, Pascal Depaepe, director of the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (France) offered a conference entitled 300,000 years of Neanderthals.
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