Neanderthals organized their living spaces like modern humans

Dec. 3 (UPI) -- Neanderthals organized their living areas for different activities, showing another similarity to modern humans.

Researchers at the University of Colorado at Denver have found that neanderthals would butcher animals, make tools and gather round a fire in different parts of their shelters. The findings, published in Canadian Journal of Archaeology, are based on excavations Riparo Bombrini, a collapsed rock shelter in northwest Italy inhabited first by neanderthals and then by modern humans.

The site comprises three levels assigned to Neanderthals. The top level was used for butchering game and the presence of a hunting stand. The middle level was a long-term base camp and the bottom level a short-term residential camp. The researchers also found the presence of ochre throughout the shelter.

"We found some ochre throughout the sequence but we are not sure what it was used for," said Riel-Salvatore, professor of anthropology at the university. "Neanderthals could have used it for tanning hides, for gluing, as an antiseptic or even for symbolic purposes -- we really can't tell at this point."

The middle level showed heavy human occupation and artifacts were distributed over this level. A lot of the stone tools and animal bones were strewn one one side of the cave, nearest sunlight, and away from the sleeping hearth on the other, indicating that they predictably patterned tool activity away from living space.

The lower level was smaller and was where tool-building took place. They also found shellfish in this level suggesting they Neanderthals fished the seas for food.

"This is still more evidence that they were more sophisticated than many have given them credit for. If we are going to identify modern human behavior on the basis of organized spatial patterns, then you have to extend it to Neanderthals as well," said Riel-Salvatore.

[Canadian Journal of Archaeology]