Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren bog obam here. No matter how much evidence we
Speaker 1: have to the contrary, Homo sapiens think ourselves very civilized.
Speaker 1: In fact, we often talk about the other human species
Speaker 1: that used to share this planet as if they were
Speaker 1: as far removed from us as armadillos or penguins. But Neanderthals,
Speaker 1: for instance, did a lot of the same things as
Speaker 1: their modern human contemporaries. They could laugh. Plus they made jewelry, string, glue,
Speaker 1: and art. Have you ever tried to make string? It's
Speaker 1: actually a bit tricky. You twist two or more bits
Speaker 1: of fiber together while at the same time twisting the
Speaker 1: individual strands in opposite directions so that the fibers locked together.
Speaker 1: It requires incredible fine motor skills and some basic mathematical understanding,
Speaker 1: plus a pensiont for civil engineering and Acording to a
Speaker 1: study published in the April edition of the journal Scientific Reports,
Speaker 1: Neanderthals checked all these boxes. The researchers discovered a fragment
Speaker 1: of cordage, probably between forty one thousand and fifty two
Speaker 1: thousand years old, and just the width of a child's
Speaker 1: pinky fingernail at an archaeological site in France. The fragment
Speaker 1: consists of three bundles of fiber twisted together but probably
Speaker 1: made from the inner bark of an evergreen tree. The
Speaker 1: string was found stuck to a small stone tool and
Speaker 1: could possibly have served as a handle for the tool,
Speaker 1: or it could have been part of the string bag
Speaker 1: that held it. According to the study, the techniques used
Speaker 1: to make this fragment of string suggest quote much larger
Speaker 1: fiber technology, which means they could have been making clothes,
Speaker 1: rope mats, and nets prior to this discovery. The oldest
Speaker 1: fiber fragments ever discovered were found in modern day Israel,
Speaker 1: probably made around nineteen thousand years ago. And beyond all that,
Speaker 1: a study published in the December twenty issue of the
Speaker 1: journal Scientific Reports finds that Neanderthal's almost certainly buried their dead.
Speaker 1: For more than a century. Archaeologists have been unearthing buried
Speaker 1: skeletons of Neanderthals in Europe and parts of Asia, but
Speaker 1: many of them were excavated using techniques that would make
Speaker 1: a modern archaeologist wins, and given the way they were exhumed,
Speaker 1: it's been exceptionally difficult to tell whether the burials were intentional,
Speaker 1: but it's been assumed by some researchers that Neanderthals weren't
Speaker 1: smart enough to engage in symbolic behavior such as honoring
Speaker 1: their dead with a burial. But a multidisciplinary team of
Speaker 1: researchers from France, Germany, and Spain reopened the case of
Speaker 1: a forty one thousand year old skeleton of a two
Speaker 1: year old child unearthed between nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three in a cave in southwestern France. The team re
Speaker 1: excavated the site where the child was found and reviewed
Speaker 1: the notes from the original dig. The researchers found the
Speaker 1: bones to be relatively unscattered, meaning animals likely hadn't messed
Speaker 1: with the body, and they didn't seem to have been
Speaker 1: weathered by the elements, which suggests rapid burial after death.
Speaker 1: In addition, the bones seemed to have been placed intentionally,
Speaker 1: with the head pointing east and uphill of the other bones,
Speaker 1: even though the incline of the hill sloped west. This
Speaker 1: study indicates that the child was intentionally deposited in the
Speaker 1: ground not long after death, and because the dating of
Speaker 1: the bones indicates the Toddler died not long before Neanderthals
Speaker 1: winked out of existence. This discovery brings up questions about
Speaker 1: when Neanderthals adopted funerary practice and how widely it spread
Speaker 1: before their extinction. Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this months
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff
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