The area around Taubach was settled very early. As early as about 100,000 years ago, hunters and gatherers went hunting from a Paleolithic campground. Animal bones found show that forest elephants, rhinos, bears, cave lions, deer, roe deer, bison, wild boars, beavers, and other animals were killed. These are assigned to the temperate climate of the Eemian interglacial period. The animals were dismembered and taken to the nearby campsite for consumption. This is indicated by a campfire with remnants of prey. The bones were processed into devices. In 1887 and 1892, respectively, two molars of a fourteen-year-old and the lower left milk molar of a nine-year-old child were found. They coincide with those of other Neanderthals. In addition, a skull burial from the older Neolithic was discovered in Taubach. It is seen with a sacrificial burial in conjunction with a fertility cult. It is the skull of a nearly two-year-old child without a lower jaw, over which the lower part of a cult-band ceramic clay vessel has been placed. Taubach became an internationally important site, especially in the period between 1870 and 1900. In 1876, the German Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistory went on an excursion to Taubach in the presence of Rudolf Virchow, among others. Largely due to the finds in the travertines of Weimar, Ehringsdorf, and Taubach, the current Museum of Prehistory and Early History of Thuringia was founded in Weimar in 1889.