My ancestors were Neanderthal

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by timojin, Mar 18, 2016.

  1. timojin Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,252
    Here comes more information about my ancestors

    Were Neanderthals more complex cavemen than we thought
    It adds to the ongoing idea that Neanderthal was more modern than generally thought before," study co-lead author Sophie Verheyden, a geologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, tells The Christian Science Monitor in an e-mail. "We never thought he would go so far underground, something that is generally attributed to the modern human" much later.

    No sunlight streams this deep into the ground. And there weren't flashlights 176,500 years ago. So Neanderthals that ventured into this cave would have needed some other light source.

    Apparently they had already learned how to control fire by this point. Some of the stacked stalagmites have burn marks on them and some of the structures appear to be hearths of some sort.

    "It's the first really good evidence that we have that Neanderthals penetrated very deep into caves and did something extremely unusual," Michael Bisson, an associate professor of anthropology at McGill University who was not part of the study, tells the Monitor in a phone interview. And, he says, "it's one of the earliest bits of evidence for the structured use of space in the European archeological record."

    This suggests that early Neanderthal society was remarkably complex and cooperative, compared to previous assumptions.

    "This kind of structures requires the mobilization of people who choose, who lead, who advise," and manufacture things, study co-lead author Jacques Jaubert, a professor of prehistory at the University of Bordeaux, France, tells the Monitor in an e-mail. And they did it all over 1,000 feet from any source of natural light.

    "All this indicates a structured society," Dr. Jaubert says.

    How would Neanderthals use these structures?

    "We really don't know at this stage," Dr. Verheyden says. The scientists don't think these people were living in the cave. "We tend to think easily of some kind of ritual or cultural structure but I must say that there is no evidence for it up to now."
     
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