A German archaeologist has been accused of multiple data falsifications. A press release from the Rhineland-Palatinate Main Cultural Heritage Office reported that for many years their employee (apparently Axel von Berg) had been deliberately deceiving the scientific community about the age of his finds. In total, after repeated research, scientists have counted almost four dozen bone remains whose dating was distorted. The most serious fabrication concerns the so-called Neanderthal from Ochtendung, whose age was initially estimated at approximately 160-170 thousand years. However, radiocarbon analysis in an independent laboratory showed that these remains actually belonged to a modern man who lived in the early Middle Ages (around the 7th-8th centuries AD).
According to published data, in 1997 a German archaeologist obtained three skull cap fragments found during stone mining in a quarry located near the community of Ochtendung in Rhineland-Palatinate, where Mousterian tools were also found. In articles devoted to these finds, the authors wrote that the remains belonged to one adult Neanderthal, approximately 30–45 years old, whose skull morphology has some features characteristic of Homo erectus.
