The man – An eternal Migrant

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You’re a Migrant or not? With this question in the Neanderthal Museum near Düsseldorf, Germany attracts its visitors in the special exhibition “2 million years of Migration”. Archaeological findings show: We are all migrants!

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Call for curiosity

    Three parts of the face of different skin color to a face. With this picture, the Neanderthal Museum lures you in with its special exhibition on Migration. And holds some interesting facts of Europe. Did you know, for example, lighter skin tones developed about 4500 years ago?

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Not only Black and White

    The photo wall at the beginning of the Show, the ongoing project “Humanae” of the Brazilian artist Angélica That. You captured the variety of skin colors. To the respective skin tone of the volunteer Models, the right wall has a selected color as a “global mosaic” was born. The project demonstrates that there is not just “Black” and “White”.

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Interactive and multitmedial

    In the exhibition, it is a modern and multi-media: in addition to anachronistic ends of suitcases grace the visitor to Audio stations and Videos that bring him the journey of his ancestors in more detail. Screens with Touchscreen-function to illustrate the migration routes on the world map.

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Of hunters, collectors… and farmers

    As before, around 7500 years ago, farmers from the middle East came to Central Europe, they met with the indigenous population of hunters and gatherers. Both groups mixed, genetically and culturally. So came home and engaged in Agriculture, cattle breeding and a little later also the metal processing to Europe.

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Why? How? Where?

    Why went who when where? Answers to many questions about the Migration of our ancestors to offer the mobile info cube. Often changes in climate or lack of food forced the people to emigrate.

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Where do You come from?

    In Video Interviews with immigrants and refugees speak about their migration experiences. Why did you come to Germany? What is the reason you have to leave your home? How were they received by the German society? And what are the children and grandchildren of migrants who are already in the second or third Generation in the Land of tell?

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Migration for the most Recent

    For the exhibitors, it was important to make the issue of Migration is also accessible to children. “In our society, there are, in fact, the children in the Kindergarten or in the school, the integration of performance with their classmates everyday,” says Museum Director Less in the DW-interview.

    Author: Anya Lamesch


  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Call for curiosity

    Three parts of the face of different skin color to a face. With this picture, the Neanderthal Museum lures you in with its special exhibition on Migration. And holds some interesting facts of Europe. Did you know, for example, lighter skin tones developed about 4500 years ago?

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Not only Black and White

    The photo wall at the beginning of the Show, the ongoing project “Humanae” of the Brazilian artist Angélica That. You captured the variety of skin colors. To the respective skin tone of the volunteer Models, the right wall has a selected color as a “global mosaic” was born. The project demonstrates that there is not just “Black” and “White”.

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Interactive and multitmedial

    In the exhibition, it is a modern and multi-media: in addition to anachronistic ends of suitcases grace the visitor to Audio stations and Videos that bring him the journey of his ancestors in more detail. Screens with Touchscreen-function to illustrate the migration routes on the world map.

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Of hunters, collectors… and farmers

    As before, around 7500 years ago, farmers from the middle East came to Central Europe, they met with the indigenous population of hunters and gatherers. Both groups mixed, genetically and culturally. So came home and engaged in Agriculture, cattle breeding and a little later also the metal processing to Europe.

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Why? How? Where?

    Why went who when where? Answers to many questions about the Migration of our ancestors to offer the mobile info cube. Often changes in climate or lack of food forced the people to emigrate.

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Where do You come from?

    In Video Interviews with immigrants and refugees speak about their migration experiences. Why did you come to Germany? What is the reason you have to leave your home? How were they received by the German society? And what are the children and grandchildren of migrants who are already in the second or third Generation in the Land of tell?

  • “Two Million Years Of Migration”

    Migration for the most Recent

    For the exhibitors, it was important to make the issue of Migration is also accessible to children. “In our society, there are, in fact, the children in the Kindergarten or in the school, the integration of performance with their classmates everyday,” says Museum Director Less in the DW-interview.

    Author: Anya Lamesch


A filament curtain at the beginning of the special exhibition “2 million years of Migration”. The faced the Museum’s visitors with the question: Am I a Migrant or Non-Migrant? Everyone can choose what applies to him and through the curtain into the Shop.

For me, the answer is clear: in 2014, I came to Bonn to Study. For the time of my master studies, I will definitely stay in Germany. Here I am, clearly a Migrant, even if my home country is Luxembourg, and only a stone’s throw away.

A primitive man of physical phenomenon

No matter which category one assigns to the special exhibition offers some Aha-moments and tried to make it clear: We are all migrants! “Our goal is to show that Migration is a very human phenomenon, the million years back,” says Gerd-Christian Less, Director of the Neanderthal Museum .

Director of the Neanderthal Museum Prof. Dr. Gerd-Christian Less

With the special exhibition, the collaborative research project “Our Way to Europe went hand in hand”. Here are the universities of Aachen, Cologne and Bonn to investigate since 2009, scientists in cooperation with the Neanderthal Museum the spread of people from Africa to Europe. Where are the people? Where did you go?

A Route that always works, is the the middle East, then today Turkey to Eastern Europe. The Strait of Gibraltar came only much later as a migration bridge to it.

The researchers noticed that the migration have movements of the time striking Similarity with today’s refugee flows. “As we’ve seen the 2015, it was clear: We need to get involved in this political discussion and our position and our knowledge about the Migration of people to contribute,” said Less in the interview -. Even if barriers would be constructed in – Migration, they could not stop.

Migration then and now

The exhibition builds a bridge between glacial and Modern. How is this implemented in the exhibition? Much of the Show deals with the milestones of prehistoric migration events: The person migrated about 100,000 years ago from Africa. Then the farmers and cattle breeders from the middle East to Europe around 7,500 years ago. To advanced the start of the metal-time horse breeder and dealer, finally, from the West Asian steppes to Central Europe.

The migration routes of the time (left) and today (R)

Parallel to the findings on the Migration of our ancestors, the exhibition makers a braid again and again references to the present time. In the Interviews, which were recorded in Videos that tell the migrants and refugees of our days, how and why they came to Germany.

A Change Of Perspective

The exhibition-makers, is aware that there is no direct connection between the immigrants of then and now. The migration reasons have changed. The upright-walking human being, of necessity, followed, for example, his hunting prey, so many to leave their country today because of war and poverty. But: “The development and the Evolution of man are associated with the Migration closely,” says Less. “The mobility of people and the alteration of habitat. In view of these findings, Dating back over two million years, it can say no solution to We to make our borders.'”

Interviews with migrants and refugees provide an insight into today’s migration reasons

The exhibition aims to bring about a change in perspective. The visitors should take a step back, to take a position, the events of the current day to the borders of Europe. The Exhibition in the Neanderthal Museum invites about the origin of their own thinking before you speak about concepts such as “limits”. Or, as a Museum visitor, said: “We are all people.”

The special exhibition “2 million years of Migration” is still up to 5. To see November 2017 in the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann.