Neanderthals Buried Their Dead: New Proof.

Was funeral of the dead practiced by Neandertals or is it Associate in Nursing innovation specific to our species? There are unit indications in favor of the primary hypothesis however some scientists stay skeptical. For the primary time in Europe.

 however, a multi-disciplinary team light-emitting diode by researchers at the CNRS and also the deposit national Histoire Naturelle (France) and also the University of the Basque Country (Spain) (1) has incontestable, employing a style of criteria, that a Neandertal kid was buried, most likely around 41,000 years agone, at the Ferrassie web site (Dordogne). Their study is printed within the journal Scientific Reports on ninth December 2020.

Dozens of buried Neandertal skeletons are discovered incontinent, leading some scientists to deduce that, like us, Neandertals buried their dead. different consultants are skeptical, however, only if the bulk of the best-preserved skeletons, found at the start of the twentieth century, weren't excavated victimization fashionable archeologic techniques.

It is at intervals this framework that a world team (1) light-emitting diode by paleoanthropologists Antoine Balzeau (CNRS and deposit national Histoire Naturelle, France) and Asier Gómez-Olivencia (University of the Basque Country, Spain), analyzed an individual's skeleton from one among the foremost noted Neandertal sites in France: the La Ferrassie rock shelter, Dordogne. when six Neandertal skeletons were discovered at the start of the twentieth century, the location delivered a seventh between 1970 and 1973, happiness to a toddler of around 2 years previous. for pretty much [*fr1] a century.

Recently, a multidisciplinary company, assembled by the 2 researchers, reopened the excavation notebooks and reviewed the fabric, revealing forty-seven new human bones not known throughout excavation and beyond any doubt happiness to the identical skeleton. 

The scientists additionally meted out a radical analysis of the bones: state of preservation, the study of proteins, genetics, dating, etc. They came back to La Ferrassie in the hope of finding additional fragments of the skeleton; though no new bones were discovered, victimization the notebooks of their predecessors, they were able to reconstruct and interpret the spatial relationships of the human remains and also the rare compared animal bones.

The researchers concluded that the skeleton had been buried during a matter layer that turned to the west (the end, to the east, was beyond the pelvis), whereas the opposite stratigraphic layers of the location inclined to the north-east. The bones, that were comparatively unscattered, had remained in their anatomical position.

Their preservation, higher than that of the bovid and different herbivores found within the same stratum, indicates a speedy burial when death. moreover, the contents of this layer proven to be before the encircling sediment (2). 

Finally, a little bone, known as human by the proteins and as Neandertal by its mitochondrial DNA, was directly dated victimization carbon-14. At around forty 1,000 years previous, this makes it one among the foremost recent directly dated Neandertal remains.

This new info proves that the body of this two-year-old Neandertal kid was purposefully deposited during a pit mamma during a matter layer around 41,000 years ago; but, additional discoveries are going to be necessary to grasp the chronology and geographical extension of Neandertal burial practices.