Neanderthals built underground

The finding of 175,000-year-old structures deep inside a cave in France suggests that Neanderthals ventured underground and were responsible for some of the earliest constructions made by hominins. See Letter p.111 Ancient ring structures built by Neanderthals Very little is known of the cultural li...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2016-06, Vol.534 (7605), p.43-44
Main Author: Soressi, Marie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/181
706/689/19/27
Anthropological research
Anthropology
Cave dwellers
Cave-dwellings
Caves
Design and construction
History
Homes and haunts
Hominids
Humanities and Social Sciences
Methods
multidisciplinary
Neanderthals
news-and-views
Science
Spatial distribution
Stalactites and stalagmites
Underground architecture
Underground construction
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Summary:The finding of 175,000-year-old structures deep inside a cave in France suggests that Neanderthals ventured underground and were responsible for some of the earliest constructions made by hominins. See Letter p.111 Ancient ring structures built by Neanderthals Very little is known of the cultural life of Neanderthals, the extinct hominins most closely related to modern humans, and of the earliest Neanderthals we know next to nothing. Since its natural closing during the Pleistocene period and until its discovery in 1990, no humans entered Bruniquel Cave, located in southwest France. Now Jacques Jaubert and colleagues describe and date two ring-like structures made of low walls of broken stalagmite pieces, deep in Bruniquel Cave. The construction of the structures 336 metres from the cave entrance, the larger more than five metres across, speaks of human industry, and the date of around 176,000 years ago places it within the compass of early Neanderthals and among the earliest well-dated structures made by humans. Traces of burning are found associated with the stalagmites, but the function of these structures remains conjectural.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/nature18440