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Skeleton
of a prehistoric man (stock image). Neanderthals buried their dead, an
international team of archaeologists has concluded after a 13-year study of
remains discovered in southwestern France. Their findings confirm that burials
took place in Western Europe prior to the arrival of modern humans.
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Dec.
16, 2013 — Neanderthals buried their dead, an international team of
archaeologists has concluded after a 13-year study of remains discovered in
southwestern France. Their findings, which appear in the journal Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, confirm that burials took place in Western
Europe prior to the arrival of modern humans.
"This
discovery not only confirms the existence of Neanderthal burials in Western
Europe, but also reveals a relatively sophisticated cognitive capacity to
produce them," explains William Rendu, the study's lead author and a
researcher at the Center for International Research in the Humanities and
Social Sciences (CIRHUS) in New York City. CIRHUS is a collaborative
arrangement between France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and
New York University.
The
findings center on Neanderthal remains first discovered in 1908 at La
Chapelle-aux-Saints in southwestern France. The well-preserved bones led its
early 20th-century excavators to posit that the site marked a burial ground
created by a predecessor to early modern humans. However, their conclusions
have sparked controversy in the scientific community ever since, with skeptics
maintaining that the discovery had been misinterpreted and that the burial may
not have been intentional.
Beginning
in 1999, Rendu and his collaborators, including researchers from the PACEA
laboratory of the University of Bordeaux and Archéosphère, a private research
firm, began excavating seven other caves in the area. In this excavation, which
concluded in 2012, the scientists found more Neanderthal remains -- two
children and one adult -- along with bones of bison and reindeer.
While
they did not find tool marks or other evidence of digging where the initial
skeleton was unearthed in 1908, geological analysis of the depression in which
the remains were found suggests that it was not a natural feature of the cave
floor.
As
part of their analysis, the study's authors also re-examined the human remains
found in 1908. In contrast to the reindeer and bison remains at the site, the
Neanderthal remains contained few cracks, no weathering-related smoothing, and
no signs of disturbance by animals.
"The
relatively pristine nature of these 50,000-year-old remains implies that they
were covered soon after death, strongly supporting our conclusion that
Neanderthals in this part of Europe took steps to bury their dead,"
observes Rendu. "While we cannot know if this practice was part of a
ritual or merely pragmatic, the discovery reduces the behavioral distance
between them and us." The study was supported, in part, by the French
Ministry of Culture and Communication and supervised by the Regional Archaeological
Service of the Limousin region.
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