The German National Library of Medicine, Health, Nutrition, the Environment, and Agriculture (ZB MED) has created this site to provide users with access to its digital collection in the field of physical anthropology. You can access the various resources in this subject area for free online, and you can also download items as PDF files.

Physical and biological anthropology is just one of the ZB MED's special subject collections. This subject area was not properly established and divided into separate professorships until the late 19th century. The discovery of a Neanderthal specimen near the town of Mettmann in 1856 prompted wide-ranging discussions on human evolution which were subsequently provided with scientific foundations by Darwin.

The project's goal is to digitise as much material on this topic as possible. This also includes adding other institutions' holdings to the collection.

The digitised documents from our stock are stored on a server operated by the North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Centre (hbz). The Visual Library software designed by the company semantics Kommunikationsmanagement GmbH is used to present and organise the digitised documents. The project also includes the participation of the company Walter Nagel GmbH & Co. KG , and plans are underway to incorporate further cooperation partners.

Please contact us for more information:

Head of Project: Dr. Ursula Zängl (phone: 0221 478 5601; retro@zbmed.de)