The English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine.[11] The German term Deutschland, originally diutisciu land ("the German lands") is derived from deutsch (compare dutch), descended from Old High German diutisc "popular" (i.e. belonging to the diot or diota "people"), originally used to distinguish the language of the common people from Latin and its Romance descendants. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz"popular" (see also the Latinised form Theodiscus), derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- "people", from which the word Teutons also originates.[12]
History
The discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago.[13] The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a coal mine in Schöningen where three 380,000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed.[14] The Neander Valley was the location where the first ever non-modern human fossil was discovered; the new species of human was called the Neanderthal. The Neanderthal 1 fossils are known to be 40,000 years old. Evidence of modern humans, similarly dated, has been found in caves in the Swabian Jura near Ulm. The finds include 42,000-year-old bird bone and mammoth ivory flutes which are the oldest musical instruments ever found,[15] the 40,000-year-old Ice Age Lion Man which is the oldest uncontested figurative art ever discovered,[16] and the 35,000-year-old Venus of Hohle Fels which is the oldest uncontested human figurative art ever discovered.[17] The Nebra sky disk is a bronze artifact created during the European Bronze Age attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt. It is part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme.[18]
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