Possible Neanderthal Burial Ground

It's funny how you stumble upon some of the most interesting things when you are trying to do research on a completely different topic!  So it was with this topic.  While searching for sources on avalanches and such for one of my Geography classes I stumbled upon a an article from the Discovery Channel website with, I'll admit, a bit of a sensationalist title.  The title of the article read " Did the Neanderthals Believe in the Afterlife?" this was followed by a subheading explaining "A possible Neanderthal burial ground suggests that they practiced funeral rituals and possessed symbolic thought before modern humans." This instantly put me off the article.  Having researched the Neanderthals earlier this term for my article assignment, surely I wouldn't have missed out on a discovery of this magnitude.  I decided to read on and the article made reference to a paper published in Quaternary International.  I instantly stopped reading the Discovery Channel page and moved over to the UVic library website to try and locate this paper,  and locate it I did.  The particular paper in question was published in April of last year and was simply titled "The excavation of buried articulated Neanderthal skeletons at Sima de las Palomas (Murcia, SE Spain)," (Walker et al. 2011)

While definitely not as sensationalist as the Discovery Channel writeup this paper published some very interesting findings.  The topic of the paper was the discovery of three reasonably complete 50,000 year old Neanderthal skeletons in a cave near Murcia, Spain.  However, what was exceptionally interesting about this discovery was that these three skeletons were articulated (Walker et al. 2011, pg 1).  In many cases this may not be significant, the bodies may have been disturbed and limbs moved, for example and animal may partially dug one up.   However, these finds are significant due to the fact that they all appear to be articulated the same way and no clear signs of being disturbed suggesting the articulation was intentional (Walker et al. 2011, pg 9). Acollection of Mousterian artifacts were also located in the same layer as the remains were found, though they did not seem to be have an association with the body as far as grave goods are concerned (Walker et al. 2011, pg 10). Each skeleton found at this site seems to have been placed on its side with its hands placed near it head (Walker et al. 2011, pg 10).  Apparently  this is a theme that has been noted with several Mousterian age skeletons and is seen as an indicator of intended burial in some Neanderthals and non-Neanderthal humans from the time (Walker et al. 2011, pg 10).  


I find this sort of discovery absolutely amazing for several reasons.  In the academic community there are are two very distinguishable views on Neanderthals. One, that they were stupid clumsy and brutish near humans and two, that they were in fact a lot closer to humans in terms of nature and intellect than originally thought.  I for one, believe that Neanderthals are not given enough credit most of the time.  The paper aforementioned clearly outlines what the authors deem to be another example of intended interment. This may indicate that burial could have been a part of Neanderthal culture, something that has been seen as uniquely human until not that long ago. I look forward to any discoveries to come.




Reference:
Walker M.J., Lopez-Martinez, M.V., Ortega-Rodriganez, J., Haber-Uriarte, M., Lopez-Jimenez, A., Aviles-Fernandez, A., Polo-Comacho, J.L., Campillo-Boj, M., Garcia-Torres, J., Carrion-Garcia, J.S., Del Toro, M.S.N., Rodriguez-Estrella, T., (2011), 'The excavation of buried articulated Neanderthal skeletons as Sima de las Palamas (Murcia, SE Spain),' Quaternary International

Here the Discovery Channel article mentioned (best taken with a grain of salt lol):
http://news.discovery.com/history/neanderthal-burial-ground-afterlife-110420.html