A strange discovery in Spain; Neanderthals were collectors!

According to Live Science; New archaeological findings in the center of the Iberian Peninsula have revealed a complex and unknown behavior among extinct human relatives. For a long time, Neanderthals collected and kept the skulls of horned animals purposefully deep in a cave; An action for which no economic or nutritional justification has been found.

Explorers in the cave “Des-Cubierta” (Des-Cubierta) located in Spain, have discovered a collection of 35 skulls of large mammals. This collection includes the remains of steppe buffaloes, orax (wild cattle), rhinoceros and red deer, which date back to this cultural behavior more than 43 thousand years ago.

The surprising point of this discovery is the precise separation of the jaws and fleshy parts of the skulls. Archaeologists believe that since the lower jaw and protein-rich parts of the animals have been removed and only the horned parts of the skull have been preserved, this accumulation cannot be related to food storage. Along with these remains, more than 1,400 Mousterian-style stone tools were found, which is considered the technical signature of the Neanderthals.

“At first glance, the accumulation of these bones seemed chaotic and disorganized,” said Lucia Vilascosa-Fernández, the study’s lead researcher from the University of Alcalá in Spain. But closer examination revealed that what looked like a jumbled mass was actually a clear document of geological processes and organized human activities.” To understand the nature of these findings, the research team prepared a detailed map of the location of all the remains.

They compared the distribution of debris from the collapse of the cave roof with the placement of bones and stone tools. The result was clear: the bones had not been moved by natural processes or rock fall, but had been deliberately and carefully placed in specific parts of the cave. This behavior was not a momentary event, but a tradition that was passed down from generation to generation. Evidence shows that Neanderthals returned to this cave many times during very cold periods between 135,000 and 43,000 years ago and added new skulls to this “collection”.

The continuation of this practice over the centuries indicates the existence of a common cultural memory and tradition among them. This discovery is another blow to the old theories that presented Neanderthals as creatures based solely on survival instinct. The selection, processing and arrangement of horned skulls in a cave that was not their permanent residence indicates their high capacity for symbolic behavior. Ludovic Slimak, an archaeologist at the University of Toulouse, France, who was not involved in this research, believes that these findings bring the discussion about Neanderthal symbolism to a new stage. “This ancient site tells us that Neanderthal semantic worlds existed, but the structure of these worlds may have been quite different from what we know in Homo sapiens,” he says.