ETIENNE FABRE - SSACNeanderthals had a much richer cultural life than their brutish troglodytic reputation might suggest, according to a study published last week (May 25) in Nature. Scientists studying southwest France’s Bruniquel Cave, which has previously yielded evidence of hominin occupation, have suggested that large circles of stalagmites broken off from the cave floor were arranged by Neanderthals more than 174,000 years ago.
“This discovery provides clear evidence that Neanderthals had fully human capabilities in the planning and the construction of ‘stone’ structures, and that some of them penetrated deep into caves, where artificial lighting would have been essential,” Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the study, told National Geographic.
“The big question is why they made it,” Jean-Jacques Hublin, a palaeoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who also did not participate in the study, told Nature. “Some people will come up with interpretations of ritual or religion or symbolism. Why not? But how to prove it?”
University of Bordeaux archaeologist Jaque Jaubert and his coauthors recently revisited the structures, which were ...
