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Jindřich Wankel (German language: Heinrich Wankel; 15 July 1821, Prague – 5 April 1897, Olomouc) was a palaeontologist and archaeologist.
Wankel was born to Damian Wankel, a clerk, and his wife Magdalena, née Schwarz, in a bilingual environment. He attended German schools in Prague and later studied Medicine at the University of Prague as a student of Josef Hyrtl.
He came to work in the area of the Moravian Karst ( Moravian Karst, today's Czech Republic) in 1847, and from 1849 lived in Blansko as a medical doctor. He started geological exploration of the area and later carried out palaeontological, archaeological, and anthropological research.
In 1850, in Blansko, he set up the first ever laboratory to research fossil bones from the Cenozoic Era where he assembled a complete skeleton of a cave bear (until then, such bones were used for spodium in the nearby sugar refinery [1]). His most famous discovery (1872) was the burial site of a nobleman from the Bronze Age at the Býčí skála cave, with skeletons of 40 ritually killed young women ([2], [3]).
His grandson Karel Absolon was also a famous archaeologist and worked in the same area.
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