World-renowned Croatian naturalist who discovered the Krapina prehistoric man.

Dragutin

Dino

How did one of Europe's greatest historical discoveries come about?

Back in 1899, workers digging sand on Hušnjak Hill came across unusual bone fragments and teeth. They anxiously turned over the yellowed teeth in their hands, guessing what kind of animal they might belong to. Since the simple workers had never seen a monkey, they luckily thought that the bones could be human, so they turned to the Franciscan Dominik Antolović.

The educated Antolović realized that the bones are extremely old and differ significantly from human bones. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew what he had to do. He contacted an old friend, paleontologist Dragutin Gorjanović from the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. Namely, Dragutin had already changed his German surname to Kramberger at that time. In accordance with the revival aspirations, he wanted it to be Croatian.

When the scholar arrived in the small town of Krapina, he realized that a hitherto unseen discovery was hidden in the small Zagorje "hill". About nine hundred human fossil bones were found in the sandstone deposits of the cave.

These bones belonged to the fossil remains of dozens of prehistoric humans of different sexes and ages. Along with them, numerous fossil remains of many animals and more than a thousand pieces of tools were found. This discovery helped Gorjanović prove the existence of Pleistocene man!

He was the first to use X-rays in his analysis and concluded that the findings were as old as 130,000 years. They tried to dispute this claim for years, but the most modern analyzes showed that Gorjanović was right. Gorjanović's findings were proof that the previous findings of fossil humans did not belong to diseased individuals, as the leading scientists at the time claimed, but to ancient human forms that differ from today's humans in physiognomy. With this, this researcher became known and respected in the world's scientific circles, and because of the works he wrote about the Krapin prehistoric man, he is considered the founder of paleoanthropology.
  
Excavations of the collection lasted six years, from 1899 to 1905. The remains of Krapina Neanderthals still represent the largest ever discovered collection from a single site, numbering more than 3,000 paleontological remains. This inspiring scientist changed the previous understanding of world history and made even a small hill in Zagorje become a big part of it.

The greatest invention

Dragutin Kramberger was born in a one-story house in Zagreb that still stands today at the corner of Mesnička and Lisinski streets. He fell in love with the study of nature through the stories of his neighbor Slavoljub Wormastiny, a pharmacist from Gornji Grad and a preparator of the National Museum. Imitating him, the boy collected fossils of fish and plants that he could find in the vicinity of Zagreb. Fossils, which came from the era when there was a sea in that area, dominated the boy's imagination.
Wanting to become a scientist, he often went on his own small expeditions. He collected butterflies that he diligently hunted in the meadows on the outskirts of the city. To the horror of the household, he also had a large collection of snails, which he carefully kept and fed.
As a true lover of nature, he enrolled in paleontology in Zurich and Munich. After completing his studies, he became the assistant of the Mineralogical-Geological Department of the Croatian National Museum. He got a job at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, where he became the head of the Department of Geology and Paleontology. His life was peaceful in teaching, but also in analyzing fossils. Until one small but big discovery...

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The greatest invention

Small fossils of a great scientist