Newcastle's Great North Museum welcomes Neanderthal woman in new exhibition

The Swanscombe skull, some of the oldest human remains ever found in Britain. © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London [year of publication]. All Rights Reserved.

Newcastle museum puts 400,000-year-old skull on display in an exhibition on a million years of human history

The Neanderthals have arrived in Newcastle – or at least one of them has - and she’s a woman.

The 400,000-year-old Neanderthal skull, found in Kent in the 1930s, is part of a collection of some of the oldest human items found in Britain which are now on display at the Great North Museum: Hancock on loan from the Natural History Museum in London until April 17.

The skull has come to Newcastle partly because it was Sunderland-born William King, who in 1863 at the British Association for the Advancement of Science event in Newcastle, first used the term Neanderthal to describe a separate species from modern humans.

William King served as curator of the Natural History Society’s museum in Newcastle, whose collections are now part of the Great North Museum, but his tenure was surrounding by controversy and wrangling which saw him leave his post.

The skull is part of the Humans in Ancient Britain display which includes a 60,000-year old hand axe, a 14,000-year-old harpoon point, and a pendant made from a badger’s tooth, all found in a cave in Dorset. [...] Chronicle Live