According to the excavations, the Neanderthals used the Descubierta cave in Spain for complex burial rituals and had an idea of the afterlife.
Experts from the Regional Archaeological Museum of Madrid have discovered the Descubierta Cave, in which Neanderthals could mourn their dead relatives. The corresponding report was presented by archaeologists at the congress of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution in Madrid in September this year. New Scientist writes briefly about the event.
In the Cave of Descubierta, 93 kilometers north of Madrid, researchers have discovered the remains of many small fires. They surrounded the place where the jaw and six teeth of the humanoid were. Analysis of these remains showed that they belonged to a Neanderthal man who died in childhood. The age of the teeth is determined at 38000-42000 years. On the bonfires around the remains of the child, horns of bison, aurochs and deer were found - only about 30 items of this kind. Next to the horns lay the skull of a woolly rhinoceros.
There are no traces of human habitation in the cave. This sharply distinguishes it from the usual Neanderthal dwelling cave, in which traces of economic activity can be found. From this, archaeologists concluded that the cave was a special place intended exclusively for performing rituals associated with the burial and mourning of the dead.
Earlier in the Middle East, Neanderthal graves were discovered, and horns were also found in them. However, many scholars believed that these items accidentally ended up in the graves. The fact is that the deliberate burial of something with a corpse indicates the presence of ideas about the afterlife. It is believed that such ideas are characteristic only of highly developed creatures, therefore, many researchers denied their presence in Neanderthals. Earlier, for the same reason, many did not believe that the Neanderthals specially brought flower pollen to the graves of relatives. And this despite the fact that such pollen was found in one Neanderthal burial of the Shanidar cave (Iraq).
And, in southern France, another group of archaeologists recently found the strange cave of Brunickel. Inside it there were several circles of stalagmites, which were clearly broken off from the surface at the point of their formation and were specially moved to another place. In the center of the circles, fires were made and bones were burned. The circles were created 177 thousand years ago, when only Neanderthals lived in this part of Europe, and representatives of our species were not there. Thus, the ritual practices of this type could be different depending on the region.