Neanderthals Built Mystery Cave Rings 175,000 Years Ago

[Ichingcarpenter]

They painted magnificent cave paintings. They mastered fire and used tools. And now we know they constructed complex buildings deep within subterranean caves, and they did it more than 175,000 years ago. No, we're not talking about early humans. Neanderthals did all this.

A team of archaeologists led by Jacques Jaubert at the University of Bordeaux in France has just completed an archaeological examination of a mysterious find: the rubble of two ancient Neanderthal-made buildings meticulously crafted from stalagmites. The site is located 1,000 feet into a dark, twisting cave 30 miles outside what is now Toulouse in southwestern France. The discovery is the first of its kind and, the researchers say, radically alters the understanding of Neanderthal culture. Jaubert's team outlines their exploration today in a paper in the journal Nature.

"Because Neanderthals were the only [human-related primate] group present in western Europe at that time, the discovery provides the first directly dated evidence for Neanderthals' construction abilities. It also shows that Neanderthals explored underground," writes Marie Soressi, archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands (not involved in Jaubert's archaeological examination), in an essay accompanying the study.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a21023/neanderthals-built-mystery-cave-rings-175000-years-ago/





Mysterious underground rings built by Neandertals


But who made the mysterious rings? Clearly humans, says Marie Soressi, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who was not involved in the new study. The deliberate arrangement of stones, as well as the size of the rings, indicates that “they clearly weren’t made by bears” wallowing a hollow to sleep in, she notes.

Verheyden and her colleagues used radioactive-dating techniques to analyze the pieces of broken stalagmite, as well as layers of minerals naturally deposited on the structures after they were constructed. The results suggest the structures were built between 175,000 and 177,000 years ago, the researchers report online today in Nature. Previous studies suggest the climate in the region during this time was relatively warm and wet, so the moisture needed to seep through the overlying rocks to create the stalagmites would have been abundant, Verheyden says. And because modern humans didn’t leave Africa until approximately 100,000 years ago, the structures must have been made by Neandertals, she adds.



http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/mysterious-underground-rings-built-neandertals

[PJMcK]

1. The more we learn about the Neanderthals...

... the more remarkable they seem. When I first learned of them in school in the 1960's, the Neanderthals were characterized as cavemen. Now, we know how complex their civilization and socialization were.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Ichingcarpenter.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Someone's trying to trick you, since the world is only 6,000 years old.

Those of us who've been to fundie church can't be fooled. We know plenty.

It's probably the debil.

[cstanleytech]

3. I wonder how they determined the age of the structure or are they basing its age on

the evidence of fire?