Underground Stone Rings Show Complex Neanderthal Cave Structures

A couple of stone rings discovered in a French cave believed to have been created by Neanderthals about 176,500 years ago indicate that the ancient humans exhibited behavior more advanced than possible.

Experts used hundreds of pillar-shaped mineral deposits called stalagmites, chopped them to a similar length and made two oval patterns that were about 40 centimeters in height.

Even though they had been found in 1990 after having been untouched for tens of thousands of years, no one thought then that it could have been possible for Neanderthals to have created them.

Sophisticated dating techniques showed that the stalagmites had been broken off of the ground about 176,500 years ago. Jacques Jaubert of the University of Bordeaux, France, says that the finding makes "these edifices among the oldest known well-dated constructions made by humans."

"Their presence at 336 meters (368 yards) from the entrance of the cave indicates that humans from this period had already mastered the underground environment, which can be considered a major step in human modernity," the researchers wrote in the study.

The rings could not have been created by either chance nor animals like bears and wolves, believe scientists.

"The origin of the structures is undeniably human," Jaubert said. "It really cannot be otherwise."

The reason for the construction is not totally clear, yet they seem symbolic or ritualistic.

"A plausible explanation is that this was a common meeting place for some type of ritual social behavior," said Paola Villa, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who wasn't involved in the study.

Wil Roebroeks, a Neanderthal expert, explains that this may be just one of many Neanderthal cultural relics that have not yet been discovered.

"Bruniquel cave (shows) that circular structures were a part of Neanderthals' material culture," he said, calling the rings "an intriguing find, which underlines that a lot of Neanderthal material culture, including their 'architecture,' simply did not survive in the open."

The reason for their creation or purpose is still not clear.

"One could even envisage that groups of Neanderthal teenagers explored this underground environment deep in the cave, as teenagers tend to do, building fires, breaking off stalagmites and gradually turning them into the structures that 175,000 years later made it into (the journal) Nature," Roebroeks said.

The findings were published in the May 25 issue of the journal Nature.