14 DAY TRIAL // Anthropologists have discovered an apparent Neanderthal sleeping chamber, within Esquilleu Cave, in Cantabria, Spain. They have found evidence that the room contained grass beds, that might have once been covered with animal fur, also used for sitting near a hearth. This discovery is supported by other research that says that Neanderthals made this kind of functional living spaces inside caves and rock shelters.
The team of archaeologists was led by Dan Cabanes, a researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science's Kimmel Center for Archaeological Research and lead author of the study. Before getting to these conclusions, scientists collected sediment samples from the cave and, through detailed analysis, managed to find out what materials were once present in several parts of the cave.
They identified the bedding material by the presence and the setting of phytoliths near the hearth area. These are minute particles formed of mineral matter by a living plant and fossilized in rock. As scientists found no evidence of soil developing, plants growing or animal transport of phytoliths, they believe that the only possibility is for the Neanderthals to have brought and placed the grass in this room of the cave.
Even if this Late Pleistocene room was inhabited somewhere between 53,000 and 39,000 years ago, according to a Journal of Archaeological Science paper, it is plausible that Neanderthals did what they could to make it more comfortable. They appeared to have renewed the grass every now and then and used the old bedding material for additional fueling of the hearth.
Dan Cabes said to Discovery News: “It is possible that the Neanderthals renewed the bedding each time they visited the cave.” He added that these hearth-side beds were also sitting areas during waking hours. “In some way, they were used to make the area near the hearths more comfortable,” he said. He added that the artifacts collected from several Neanderthal sites suggest that they also had stone tools, cooked, ate and took naps near fires.
The hearth was mostly fueled by bark and wood as most phytolits revealed and some animal bones were also apparently tossed into the fire, as extra fuel or simply a way of disposal.
Josep Vallverdu of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution and his team identified earlier this year a “sleeping activity area” in the Abric Romani risk shelter, also in Spain. The settings discovered were very similar to those in the Esquilleu Cave, with remains of hearths and sleeping and sitting areas. “This set of combustion activity areas suggests analogy with sleeping and resting activity areas of modern foragers,” Vallverdu noted. This information might help understand the size of the Neanderthal population and the way they lived.