Groß Pampau, GR, c. 500,000 BP, Anthropoidea / r)pampgor1

Identified by Ursel Benekendorff as 'gorilla'.

Photo © Ursel Benekendorff. Collection Ursel Benekendorff. The site is documented in Benekendorff, U. (1990). From the information recorder stone to a picture book of the stone age. Archaeologische Berichten 20:14-28 and 43-65 (Elst, NL).

Comment: Since palaeozoologists have not identified fossils of gorilla in NW Europe, and if this identification is correct, then peoples who moved into NW Europe in the Cromerian warm-times may have carried with them a mythological or oral tradition memory from Africa or Asia. The figure does resemble reconstructions of Gigantopithecus, a 3m tall ape that appears to have lived at least into the Middle Pleistocene about 1 million years ago in Asia.