A German archaeologist has been accused of multiple data falsifications. A press release from the Rhineland-Palatinate Central Office for Cultural Heritage stated that for many years, their employee (apparently a reference to Axel von Berg) deliberately deceived the scientific community about the age of his finds. In total, after repeated studies, scientists have identified nearly four dozen skeletal remains whose dating was distorted. The most serious fabrication concerns the so-called Ochtendung Neanderthal, whose age was initially estimated at approximately 160,000–170,000 years. However, radiocarbon dating in an independent laboratory showed that these remains actually belonged to a modern human who lived in the early Middle Ages (c. 7th–8th centuries CE).
According to published data, in 1997, a German archaeologist obtained three skull cap fragments discovered during stone mining in a quarry near the community of Ochtendung in Rhineland-Palatinate, where Mousterian tools were also found. In articles describing these finds, the authors stated that the remains belonged to a single adult Neanderthal, approximately 30–45 years old, whose cranial morphology exhibited some features characteristic of Homo erectus.
