Discovery of Ancient Child’s Bones Answers Longstanding Mystery

A short life, lived roughly more than 40,000 years ago, was exposed at a popular archeological site located in southwestern France.

It remains unknown, though, if the discovery was boy or girl. However, this ancient child, a Neanderthal, was found to have made it to roughly about two years of age.

The remains of a number of Neanderthals have been discovered in the said site, including this newest discovery, the child identified only as "La Ferrassie 8."

According to a ScienceAlert report, when the ancient remains were initially discovered, most at different stages at the beginning of the 20th century, archeologists had presumed the skeletons depicted intentional burials, "with Neanderthals laying their dead kin to rest under the Earth."

Nevertheless, in modern archeology, doubts today spin around the question. If the Netherlands did certainly bury their dead loved ones like that, or if this specific aspect of funerary rites is extraordinarily Homo sapien tradition.

The 'Mystery'

With this mystery in mind, the team led by researchers at the Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique and the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in France has conducted a comprehensive re-evaluation of the ancient remains of La Ferrassie 8, now being kept in the museum for nearly five decades from discovery from 1970 to 1973.

In their paper, the researchers wrote that the discovery and framework has generally been considered as poorly documented although, in fact, this insufficiency comes from lack of essential processing of materials and information from "La Ferrassie-related to penultimate excavation phase from 1968 to 1973."

In this new study, the authors evaluated the notebooks, as well as the field diaries the original excavation team used, including analyses of the bones of La Ferrassie 8.

The researchers performed new excavations too, as well as investigations at the La Ferrassie cave shelter site where the remains of the child were discovered.

How the Well-Preserved Bones Were Laid to Rest

To come up with a conclusion, the research team validated that the "well-preserved bones were laid to rest" in an "unscattered" way, staying in their so-called anatomical position, with their head raised higher compared to the rest of the body. However, the lay of the land was persuaded at a different angle.

Moreover, there no marks of animals on them, which the researchers regard as another possible sign of prompt, planned burial.

Essentially, lack of carnivore markings, the low spatial-disturbance degree, fragmentation, and weathering, according to the researchers, all propose that they were quickly "covered by sediment."

Specifically, the study authors added, they could not find any natural process, non-anthropic, for instance, that could explain the existence of the child linked to elements within a "sterile layer with a disposition" that's not following the stratum's geological inclination.

Research Suggests

In this circumstance, the authors suggested that the LF8 child's body was laid in a "pit dug into the sterile residue."

This is not the first research in recent years to claim the most recent evidence of Neanderthals burying their dead, and it possibly won't be the last.

The French team said it is time that today's new and improved investigative standards are taken to look on La Ferrassie 1 through 7's varying skeletal remains, giving the experts an updated analysis on the manner of how they were entombed.

Check out more news and information on Neanderthals on Science Times.