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A Neanderthal skeleton unearthed in an Iraqi cave, already famous for fossils of these cousins of our species, is providing fresh evidence that they buried their dead – and intriguing clues that flowers may have been used in such rituals.

[theguardian.com]

Jnei 8 Feb 19
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0

There's no smoking gun here indicating burial, let alone ritual burial. It's suggestive, but we are still a long ways from settling the issue. 70 years of debate on the topic already.

Druvius Level 8 Feb 19, 2020

There's certainly sufficient evidence to strongly suggest Neanderthals deliberately buried their dead, however. No smoking gun in the form of a handy cave painting depicting a funeral or anything like that, but there have been many discoveries of skeletons buried with far larger amounts of flower pollen than one would expect to find had the pollen been blown by the wind onto a body left exposed.

@Jnei "Strongly suggest" doesn't settle issues like this. No grave goods, shallow "grave" inside a cave, who buries there dead inside their home? Body not posed in any way. And flowers could have been just to keep the smell masked, that's evidence of practicality, not symbolic thought. Fortunately we are in a golden age of archeology, so more evidence one way or the other will likely come to light.

@Druvius I'm absolutely not suggesting that this settles the issue of whether or not Neanderthals deliberately buried their dead, nor that they were capable of symbolic thought.

However, I stand by what I said: there is significant evidence to suggest that they were. Keeping the dead so close could even be evidence of that - while we in the modern western world might consider it unusual to keep our dead at home with us, such a concept might not be so unusual to Neanderthals; as I recall, the Toraja people of Indonesia today keep the bodies of dead relatives in their homes for decades.

Secondly, a rotting human corpse really stinks and, depending on conditions, can take a long time before being reduced to dry bones. Flowers, meanwhile, can rot away in a few weeks; you'd need a very great deal of them and would have to replace them very regularly in order to mask the smell of a corpse.

0

Gotta do something with the dead bodies , cause after awhile , they smell .

Cast1es Level 9 Feb 19, 2020

In a pre-industrialised world, with a few million Neanderthals, getting rid of bodies wouldn't be an especially problematic thing to have to do - simply leave them out in the wilds somewhere and hungry animals will soon do the work!

1

Is this really surprising? For me ,no..yet the 19th century attitudes that they were knuckle dragging cretins still lingers,even within the field of paleo anthropology. THAt is,for me, is the real surprise.

Charlene Level 9 Feb 19, 2020

Nineteenth Century.

@Fernapple thanks for the reminder😁

0

We are learning that they were more like us than previously thought

bobwjr Level 10 Feb 19, 2020
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