In the cave of Chauvet in the Ardèche (France), French-Belgian researchers discovered recently man-made landscape structures which they date back 176,500 years. The cave houses stalagmites set in a circle or piled up as well as various areas with hearth. Two tons of material had been transported there by prehistoric men. This finding is surprising because according to the current state of scientific research, Homo Sapiens had not yet arrived in Europe at that time, which therefore means that the cave was frequented by men of the Neanderthal for unknown reasons. They seemed to have developed specific intricate social structures. This discovery moves back dramatically the date of occupation of the caves of Chauvet by the genus Homo. The earliest formal evidence so far dated back to 38,000 years, according to the CNRS (National Scientific Research Centre, Belgium). One of the researchers of the CNRS, Sophie Verheyden (chemist and speleologist) participated in the discovery and concludes that “this discovery changes our view of the Neanderthals.»
The Chauvet cave and cave paintings were discovered in 1990 by speleologists who used the Carbone-14 dating technique to analyze a bone fragment found in the cave. It indicated an age of 47,600 years, the maximum this dating technique can achieve. The cave did not attract much attention until 2011 when Sophie Verheyden, who explored the cave again, thought of using the uranium-thorium dating technique locked in stalagmites to determine the age of the occupation of the cave. This technique can go back in time up to 600,000 years. Concerning the cave of Chauvet, this method gave a result of 176,500 years (the margin of error is only of 2,000 years).
The question arises about why the Neanderthal men had chosen to go 250 meters underground, far from the light of day, dropping two tons of material to set up their structures. What were they doing there? Was it a place of worship, mysticism, hunting? or were they trying to escape the rigor of the climate?
Following the discovery in the cave of Chauvet, it is now the turn of climatologists, after the speleologists and the archaeologists, to participate in the search for an explanation to the evolution of the man of Neanderthal.
Who was “Homo Neanderthalensis”?
The discovery in 1856 of a human skull in a cave in the Neanderthal Valley near Dusseldorf in Germany gave the name “man of Neanderthal” to hominids quite distinct from the Homo Sapiens. Bones with the same characteristics were found at various locations in Belgium, France, Italy, Croatia, southern Russia, Palestine, North Africa. The Man of the Neanderthal lived in the Middle Paleolithic during the interglacial Riss-Wurm and the beginning of the Würmian glaciation (about 150,000 and 30,000 years ago). Stocky, small in size, he had a specific facial architecture. His brain, despite the flattened appearance of the skull, had a rather different structure from that of modern man. His tools were typical of the Mousterian Era (main cultural event of the Middle Paleolithic in Eurasia, approximately 300,000 to 30,000 years ago). He worked wood and made skins, and had mortuary symbolic practices. It is now considered a subspecies of Homo Sapiens, called Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, following the evolution of Homo Erectus in Western Europe. He was replaced around 35,000 BC by the Homo Sapiens Sapiens, modern man, architect of Upper Paleolithic cultures and probably originated in the Middle East.
