The Neandertal

Anyone wandering through the Neandertal begins to understand why the Neanderthals settled here and why Joachim Neander later preferred to spend his time here. The quiet valley floor, the light forests, the babbling of the Düssel: the valley is the most beautiful place far and wide. However, the idyll is deceptive - it is man-made. Limestone mining completely changed the Neandertal in the 19th century. The once narrow gorge through which Neanders roamed became a wide valley. An early industrial environmental sin, but fortunate for research. Two miners who cleared a grotto for the extraction of lime in 1856 found strange human bones. As we know today, it was not the first Neanderthal bones to be found. But it was the first that researchers suspected what they were looking at: relics of an extinct human species.

At first they encountered bitter resistance with this assumption: The theory of evolution was not generally accepted for a long time, and Charles Darwin's groundbreaking book “The Origin of Species” was not due to appear until three years after the discovery. The leading German pathologist at the time, Rudolf Virchow, considered the bones to be the remains of a modern human being deformed by an illness. The thought that other kinds of people should have lived on earth besides us was simply unheard of.

To this day the idea is strange that a few thousand years ago, here by the river between the trees, you could have met a Neanderthal man. You can catch up on this meeting in the Neanderthal Museum, the destination of the hike. There are replicas of Neanderthals that are so realistic that you want to speak to them. You can't get any closer to them than this.

On the left bank of the Düssel, 350 m west of the Thunis farm and 320 m southwest of the Winkel farm, stands the Winkelsmühle, which has been mentioned in documents since 1483.
The mill building is located directly below a protruding rock face, on the north side of the valley. The former upper ditch and current course of the Düssel was carved into the limestone. The existing weir has been modernized. Remains of the old course of the Düssel can be found on the slope side, the southern and western sides of the valley, in the form of a pond.
The mill building is a three-storey quarry stone house with a two-storey extension on the left side. This part is only made of quarry stone on the ground floor, the upper floor is half-timbered. The farm buildings opposite are modern.
After a fire, the mill building was extensively renovated in 1971. Another renovation took place in 1996.
In its more than 600-year history, the Winkelsmühle has undergone many structural changes, which can also be found in archaeological evidence. It was first mentioned in a document in 1387, in a list of tithes that went to the Kaiserswerth monastery. 100 years later, the mill was granted milling rights by the duke. This regulation was confirmed again by Duke Wilhelm III of Jülich-Berg in 1547. The Winkelsmühle suffered greatly during the chaos of war in the 17th century. A report from 1672 describes that the residential building burned down, the barn collapsed and the mill itself could no longer be used.
Incidentally: In the 1930s, the pond served as a natural outdoor swimming pool.
When the milling requirement was abolished during the French period, the mill was no longer profitable to operate. Necessary repairs could not be carried out, and the mill was auctioned off in 1802.
The Winkelsmühle is shown repeatedly on historical maps. Among others on the Unterbach hunting map from 1641 and the Müffling map from 1824.
The Winkelsmühle and the archaeological evidence found underground in the form of wall foundations and everyday objects are important for the industrial history of the Niederberg hills, the Düsseltal and the city of Mettmann.

Beautiful, varied hiking trails along the Düssel.