Neanderthals built homes with mammoth bones
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 44,000 year old Neanderthal building that was constructed using the bones from mammoths.
The circular building, which was up to 26 feet across at its widest point, is believed to be earliest example of domestic dwelling built from bone.
Neanderthals, which died out around 30,000 years ago, were initially thought to have been relatively primitive nomads that lived in natural caves for shelter.
IIRC, these aren’t unknown but were later and/or not generally related to Neanders. Actually, I’m thinking this is probably the first structure actually linked to Neanderthals, yes? Caves and rock shelters they occupied regularly, but actual constructions, I did not think so.
Not too many years ago, there was a documentary about the origin of humans on television. Alec Baldwin was the primary reader, iirc. One species of H was said to have had at least 100k years, possibly more, of exactly the same hand ax technology. They were not innovators, said the script. Brings up the question: If they can’t improve something over 100k years, how on earth did they start the thing in the first place? How about imitation? Some out of order genius figured out the hand ax but got no further before something happened to him; a hand-ax using hominin variant lived at the same time and possibly they met and our stick-in-the-muds got the first idea.
So, maybe a Neanderthal group spotted a bunch of H. Saps doing the bone teepee thing and imitated it. Other groups weren’t so lucky.
And, of course, you need mammoths, and if you have enough caves, you don’t have to bother.
Comment by Richard Aubrey — December 22, 2011 @ 7:10 pm
Not changing toolmaking, doesn’t have to say anything about intelligence or whatever else. Couldn’t refind the origininal publication, but the conclusion was almost equal to this:
http://scienceline.org/2011/03/are-you-smarter-than-a-neanderthal-toolmaker/
Further muddying the issue is the fact that no one is certain whether the new, sharper tools were really more effective in coping with the cooling climate than Neanderthal tools. The blunt tools favored by Neanderthals were more clumsy-looking than the bladed stone tools their human contemporaries used, but were produced more efficiently and lasted longer.
If Neanderthals did not develop new tools, it may not have been because they were insufficiently intelligent, but because they were already smart enough to know they didn’t need the cool new tools that the humans used in the cave next door. “Unchanging technology used to equal inability to innovate, but it could have just been them reaching the peak [of efficiency],” said archaeologist Metin Eren of Southern Methodist University in Texas.
Comment by Toos — December 24, 2011 @ 6:50 pm