In an announcement that is sure to turn the scientific world on its ear, a controversial archaeologist has published the first pictures from a secret dig site located near the Rhine river in the Black Forest region. Dr. Ernst Voorst, Director of the Reinhard Van Gelder Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology from the Univerisity of the Rhine, gave the media and the scientific world outside his team their first look at a prehistoric woodland community.

Dubbing their find the City in the Trees, the archaeological team from the Institute claims the find substantiates Dr. Voorst’s earlier work in the field. In 2007 Dr. Voorst and his colleague and mentor, Dr. Reinhard Van Gelder, announced to a highly skeptical scientific community that they had resolved a 100-year-old mystery surrounding two ancient fortresses facing each other across the Rhine river.

Nestled in what has now become known as the Golden Wood, the white fortress was the bastion of the apparent victors in a war that Voorst and his associates say occurred around 10,000-12,000 years ago. The archaeological community failed to rush to embrace the Voorst-Van Gelder expedition’s findings because they did not uncover any graves or find human remains.

But all that skepticism only seemed to spur Voorst on. Van Gelder died in 2008 but left most of his considerable fortune to fund the institute that now bears his name. In this week’s announcement Voorst and his team honored Dr. Van Gelder’s long battle for credibility on the twin fortresses issue by unveiling evidence of their first human remains.

Revealing for the first time that human remains have indeed been found, Dr. Voorst and his associate, French anthropologist Felecia Bonnet, say they have conclusively radiocarbon-dated the female remains to approximately 10,000 years ago — around the time of the destruction of the eastern fortress, plus-or-minus 150 years.

Although the scientific community has not had time to react to the story, the “Princess of the Golden Wood”, as the team has named her, is sure to make skeptics sit up and take notice. Read more on the story in this ‘Woodland Princess’ article. Biographical information on Dr. Voorst and Dr. Van Gelder is included.