Archaeologists have discovered strange ring structures erected in a deep cave
Bruniquel cave, located in the south-west of France, holds a kind of record. People who lived in it in the distant past climbed to a depth of 336 meters. And there they built strange ring structures, laid out from broken off stalactites and stalagmites.
The cave in which the Neanderthals lived is located in France
Archaeologists discovered an unusual underground settlement back in 1992. They marveled at the buildings, but did not thoroughly investigate them. Only recently have they been contacted again. And again they were surprised. Radiocarbon analysis, carried out by scientists from the University of Bordeaux, showed that stone circles and semicircles were piled up by someone 176 thousand years ago. At that time, Neanderthals inhabited the territory of France. Modern-looking people - like us - appeared here after about 100 thousand years.
Professor Jacques Jaubert, who led the research, assures: the buildings are definitely man-made. Bears making rookeries could not build one.
Scientists called the underground rings the cave Stonehenge. But they did not guess their purpose. However, the original itself remains mysterious. There is only a very controversial assumption that inside the rings, cavemen performed some ritual actions.
The found structures make us treat Neanderthals with more respect. After all, it is believed that they became extinct in the end due to their own stupidity, losing in intellectual competition with Homo sapiens. Allegedly, Neanderthals had poorly developed imaginative thinking, they found it difficult to establish social connections, resembling in this sense people with autism, they did not know how to work together.
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But it is possible that the current ideas about our brothers in reason will have to be corrected. It seems that the Neanderthals did organize groups to perform complex tasks. Evidence of this is the very rings of the ring from the Brunickel cave, laid out of stalactites and stalagmites. The Neanderthals broke more than 400 "pillars" of the same size, dragged them over impressive distances under artificial lighting. Someone did not do it alone. And the goal was common and clear to all the inhabitants of the cave - approved and agreed upon, since its implementation required concerted efforts. And guides.
Perhaps blaming Neanderthals for widespread autism is in vain
In a word, the Neanderthals were not such fools as they sometimes try to portray.
3D model of the remains of the cave Stonehenge
Vladimir LAGOVSKY