The discovering of six small flint knives discovered within the Cantabrian cave of El Castillo, in Puente Viesgo, probably the most necessary on the earth for the research of the Middle and Superior Paleolithic, concludes that the inhabitants of Neanderthals who lived within the grott confirmed till as we speak in exchanges of this group of hominids in Europe and Asia.
The discovery, in response to all scientists who’ve participated within the research and different consultants, is one other mile sapiensof their technological and social behaviors and abilities of what was taken as a right only a decade in the past.
The research, led final 12 months by José Manuel Maíllo and Juan Marín, prehistory professors of the UNED, and revealed in Journal of human evolutionprobably the most prestigious worldwide anthropology magazines, has revealed not solely the existence within the fortress of half a dozen pie south.
According to Maíllo, “the conclusion of these works is another contribution in the direction that the Neanderthales had a much broader social territory than what was thought until recent the magnitudes we knew. ”
Álvaro Arrizabalaga, Professor of Prehistory on the University of the Basque Country, emphasizes that “it is a very important discovery within this trend that approximates the behavior, not only technological but also social, of the Neanderthals to our species, in a key site in the Peninsula such as the cave of El Castillo.”
“The general framework is very different from that of ten years ago, when the paradigm greatly differentiated the two species in behaviors and in the physical plane; the distances between them were maximized. Since 2016, when the human genome was sequences in its entirety, it is discovered that we share DNA with the Neanderthals, that we are hybrid in that sense,” continues Arrizabalaga.
The identification of the origin of the flint instruments of the third -party website has been doable due to the geological research of the Globigerinoids, the marine microfossils, directed by Diego Herrero, researcher on the University of Vigo.
The 262 items discovered within the cave come from an excavation directed by archaeologists Victoria Cabrera and Federico Bernaldo de Quirós between 1980 and 2003, though, in response to Maíllo, “most have not been able to identify due to alterations of the raw material, since the flint loses the silica because of the contact with the water loaded with calcium carbonate so abundant in the caves.”
For the non permanent relationship of the instruments, carbon 14 and digital spin resonance strategies (ESR) have been used, which analyzed the isotopes of the dentin – the intermediate tissue of a tooth – of stays of animals that have been discovered on the similar archaeological ranges because the items, two of that are estimated in an age round 70,000 years and the remaining, in about 47,000.
According to Roberto Ontañón, director of Cuevas de Cantabria and the Museum of Prehistory and Archeology of this area, “the more we know the Neanderthals, the more we seem more. They warn about the complexity of their social behaviors and skills. ”
Thus, in response to this researcher, the exchanges step-by-stepof neighbors with neighbors till they contact inhabitants teams of France, it’s one thing demonstrated within the Magdaleniense period, the individuals who lived in Altamira 15,000 years in the past, with their lengthy -range exchanges. “The recent discoveries in the mobility of the Neanderthals and, above all, the one obtained in the Castle will equate these guidelines with those of ourselves,” Ontañón concludes.
Álvaro Arrizabalaga additionally emphasizes that between the uncooked supplies of the items discovered there are a number of from the Ebro basin. “Until 2000 it was interpreted that the westernmost Cantabrian region was like A bag backgroundthat prehistoric populations were only related to the north to France – in the caves of the Basque Country, instead, Treviño flint has been found – and these discoveries reveal a Untils of the theory, because the mountains to the south are not excessively high and logical were not insurmountable. ”
According to this professor on the University of the Basque Country, “this change or mobility explains significantly better the settlement within the Iberian Peninsula and is confirmed by the deposits which might be showing within the Ebro basin itself and even within the plateau: within the Madrid area they’ve found three deposits of the Auriñaciense final 12 months (about 40,000 years), one, even, on lots subsequent to the station of Delicias, within the middle!
https://elpais.com/ciencia/2025-08-09/un-descubrimiento-en-la-cueva-cantabra-de-el-castillo-estrecha-aun-mas-las-diferencias-de-los-neandertales-con-nuestra-especie.html