Museum of Natural History

Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde (Museum of Natural History) documents more than two centuries of collecting and displaying specimens from the natural world. The museum’s galleries are packed with fossils, stuffed animals (including extinct ones), geological specimens (such as prismatic columnar basalt – a favorite in our family!), and animal specimens preserved in glass jars. There is one room devoted to anthropology, which displays remains and re-creations of all the known hominids up to and including homo sapiens. The homo sapiens display case contains just a few examples of material culture – objects that were made by early man – but these are very famous artifacts, including the so-called Venus of Willendorf