Researchers have long tried to unravel the mystery of 35 horned skulls found in a cave in central Spain. These fossilized remains, left by Neanderthals, belong to aurochs, deer, and steppe rhinoceroses. Why the cave’s ancient inhabitants preserved those skulls remains unknown.
Authors of a new study from Spain, Portugal, and China argue that Neanderthals collected the skulls for ritual purposes. The team suggests the practice was passed down across generations.
What Did the Scientists Discover?
Evidence in Cueva Des Cuvierta indicates that fires were made there. However, other animal remains are absent. It is likely that only the heads were brought into the cave.
Researchers previously dismissed the idea that the skulls came from animals eaten by Neanderthals, because there is little meat in an animal’s head.
Data collected by this team and earlier researchers suggest a symbolic function for the horned skulls. Researchers are increasingly leaning toward a ritual explanation. In earlier years, many scientists considered that idea bold and doubtful.
Many researchers have treated Neanderthals’ spiritual life and cognitive abilities as fairly limited. But the unusual collection of horned skulls indicates that Neanderthals were capable of abstract thought and ritual behavior.
Moreover, skulls scattered across several meters of sediment suggest they weren’t placed all at once. That implies Neanderthals collected them over an extended period, IFLScience reports.
The team has not established exact dates for when the bones accumulated in the cave. They may date to roughly 50,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Researchers also conducted a detailed geostatistical and spatial analysis of the sediment layer and the unusual artifacts within it. The results showed that the sediments accumulated because of successive rockfalls. Layers with fewer boulders indicate periods of relative calm between rockfalls. The fact that animal remains are interspersed with these calmer intervals shows that the skulls accumulated over an unusually long time.
“The repeated use of a limited space suggests that the appearance of the skulls was part of a recurring, culturally conditioned behavior (a transmitted practice) that lasted over an indefinite but extended period,” the authors wrote. That means the collection was added to by multiple Neanderthal generations.
“The integration of geological, spatial, and taphonomic data showed that the accumulation of skulls from large herbivores was not a one-time event but likely the result of repeated episodes of a long-term process,” the authors wrote. They add that the process was not related to providing food for Neanderthals.
The results of the study were published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.
