Neanderthals Built Mystery Cave Rings 175,000 Years Ago

[ScienceRocks]

Neanderthals Built Mystery Cave Rings 175,000 Years Ago

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 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.

Neanderthals Built Mystery Cave Rings 175,000 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


The more we dig and discover the more we learn! Far better then bombing other countries or fucking over the poor. Don't you think?

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says...

... Mebbe dey's the ones...

... doin' the crop circles?

 

[Bruce_T_Laney]

Neanderthals Built Mystery Cave Rings 175,000 Years Ago

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 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.

Neanderthals Built Mystery Cave Rings 175,000 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


The more we dig and discover the more we learn! Far better then bombing other countries or fucking over the poor. Don't you think?

175,000 years ago?

I thought the Earth and Universe was farted out of a Divine Butt nearly 10,000 years ago...

Alright, the reality is Humanity is still discovering new clues about our past and once ( if humanity ever does it ) we start exploring space then we will discover more and it might surprise the human race that our story goes further back than what we realize...

 

[The Great Goose]

It's our neanderthal genes which make us compssionate and inventive.

 

[Old Rocks]

Archaeologists confirm Indian civilization is 2000 years older than previously believed

As Dikshit and his colleague, BR Mani, current joint director general of the ASI, write in a recent note on their findings:

“The earliest levels at Bhirrana and Kunal yielded ceramics and antiquities ... suggesting a continuity in culture, right from the middle of the eighth millennium BCE onwards ... till about 1800 BCE.”

That suggests the Harappan civilization is nearly as old as sites from West Asia such as Jericho, where evidence of a neolithic city has been found to date from as early as 9000 BC. But it also means that Harappa, with new proof of hakra ware dating to 7500 BC, may have been more technologically advanced — bolstering India's claim to the title of the cradle of civilization.

The story of man, from recent to deep time, is fascinating, and we have much to learn.