Human presence in the area as early as the Paleolithic age is testified by archaeological excavations. Two parts from a human skull were found in 1865 and given to Charles-Frédéric Faudel, a physician in nearby Colmar, who carefully described the find and noted they were found undisturbed between animal bones, which allowed for a relative dating at a time when the very existence of prehistoric humans was still doubted. The find became known in France in 1867 through Paul Broca, and subsequently became a topic of discussion in the debate over what would become Paleoanthropology. Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau and Ernest Hamy, in their 1873 Crania ethnica, grouped Eguisheim and others with the finds at Neanderthal and Naulette, creating a "race of Canstadt" that was so flexible that almost all fossil remains of humans would fit. Gustav Schwalbe, in a comparison with other skull fragments including those found in Spy, Belgium, concluded the skull was sufficiently different from Neanderthal skulls and approached the measurements of modern humans. One reviewer cast some doubt on Schwalbe's comparison and argued that only the cranial vault was substantially different from the others, but this, he said, could have been a normal variation from the mean within a group. Later scholars seem to have accepted the identification of the skull as belonging to a Neanderthal, though Schwalbe again, in 1902, insisted on the difference between the Eguisheim and Neanderthal skulls. In 1904 Schwalbe proposed a species he called Homo primigenius for what at least one of his contemporaries called Home neandertalensis, and excluded the Eguisheim skull from that category. In early historic times it was inhabited by the Gaul tribe of the Senones; the Romans conquered the village and developed here the cultivation of wine. In the early Middle Ages, the Dukes of Alsace built here a castle around which the current settlement developed. The commune was the alleged birthplace of Pope Leo IX in June 1002.
Tourism
The village centre receives many tourists, as the Alsace "Wine Route" passes the village. The village is also a member of the Les Plus Beaux Villages de France association.
