The Neanderthal groups that inhabited a give procedure what’s now Spain approximately 46,000 years previously gathered and picked up fossils, in step with a paper printed in the journal Quaternary.
Marine fossils from Prado Vargas Cave, Spain. Image credit: Ruiz et al., doi: 10.3390/quat7040049.
Gathering is a gaggle apart of leisure, and even a ardour, consisting of gathering, preserving and showing objects.
After we peek for its origin in the literature, we are taken lend a hand to ‘the seems to be of writing and the fixing of info,’ particularly with the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal (seventh century BCE), and his fondness for gathering books, which in his case beget been in the set apart of clay pills.
That is no longer, on the different hand, a factual reflection, for we now beget evidence of worthy earlier collectors.
The curiosity and curiosity in preserving stones or fossils of more than a few colours and shapes, as manuports, is as ancient as persons are.
For many years, archaeologists beget had evidence of objects of no utilitarian fee in Neanderthal homes.
Several European websites beget proven that these Neanderthal groups treasured objects that attracted their consideration.
On some occasions, these objects would possibly well well presumably additionally beget been modified to manufacture a non-public decoration and would possibly well well even beget been integrated into subsistence activities similar to grinders or hammers.
In overall, one or two such specimens are stumbled on but, to this point, no Neanderthal cave or camp has yielded as many as Prado Vargas Collapse Cornejo, Burgos, Spain.
Within the Mousterian level of the cave, Universidad de Burgos archaeologist Marta Navazo Ruiz and her colleagues stumbled on an assemblage of 15 marine fossils relationship lend a hand to the Upper Cretaceous epoch.
“All specimens belong to the phylum Mollusca, along with for one, belonging to the phylum containing the echinoderms (Echinodermata),” they explained.
“Among the mollusks, half belong to the category of bivalves (Bivalvia) and the assorted half to the gastropods (Gastropoda).”
“Within the gastropods, the household finest represented, with six specimens, is Tylostomatidae. This fossil team belongs to the identical class as unique snails and so they would possibly well well presumably attain 10 cm; they’ve a holostomatous shell with several spirals, the final of which is better.”
“The Tylostomatidae fossils demonstrate in the cave beget been snails that lived on shallow seabeds hundreds of thousands of years previously.”
The fossils, with one exception, demonstrate no evidence of getting been old as tools.
Thus, their presence in the cave will seemingly be attributed to gathering activities.
“It seems definite that the option and transport of these fossils by these Neanderthals into the cave held some meaning and symbolized one thing, which has led the analysis group to propose varied hypotheses to illustrate this habits,” the archaeologists acknowledged.
“They would possibly well well want been peaceful merely for dazzling causes since the Neanderthals stumbled on their shapes swish; for alternate in the future of the team or with assorted Neanderthal groups; as toys; or to enhance their cultural identity as a ingredient of the team’s possess social brotherly love, in the sense that the fossils bolt them without lengthen with the territory they inhabited.”
“It is doable that the gathering changed into once performed by the youth of the team,” they renowned.
“Experiences with our possess species beget proven that the sequence of objects is a characteristic of childhood.”
“Essentially basically based totally on specialists, gathering habits seems in human youth between the ages of 3 and 6, for the time being they originate to seize ticket to themselves, and it continues till they’re 12 years ancient.”
“Gathering continues in the future of puberty, though less intensively, whereas from the age of 18 this habits peters out and doesn’t emerge again till they’re about 40.”
“It is doable that the Prado Vargas Neanderthals stumbled on the fossils both deliberately or by likelihood, but what’s apparent is that carrying them to the cave changed into once deliberate, systematic and reiterated, and we can acknowledge their efforts and curiosity in gathering these fossils in this,” the researchers concluded.
“Thus, the Neanderthals of this give procedure Burgos beget change into the earliest fossil collectors we know of nowadays in our evolutionary course of.”
_____
Marta Navazo Ruiz et al. 2024. Had been Neanderthals the First Collectors? First Proof Recovered in Stage 4 of the Prado Vargas Cave, Cornejo, Burgos and Spain. Quaternary 7 (4): 49; doi: 10.3390/quat7040049
