Wanted in Rome
10 May, 2021
Remains of nine Neanderthals unearthed at prehistoric cave at San Felice Circeo.
Archaeologists in Italy have discovered the fossilised remains of nine Neanderthals in a prehistoric cave south of Rome, the Italian culture ministry announced over the weekend.
It is believed that the Neanderthals may have been hunted by hyenas and dragged back to animals den in the Grotta Guattari in the coastal town San Felice Circeo, some 90 km south of Rome.
The fossilised bones include skullcaps, teeth and broken jawbones, in a discovery described by culture minister Dario Franceschini as extraordinary.
Image courtesy Ufficio Stampa e Comunicazione MiC. Photo by Emanuele Antonio Minerva.
According to
The New York Times , because this skull had a large hole in the temple, its finder, paleontologist Alberto Carlo Blanc, suggested that the cave’s Neanderthal inhabitants had engaged in “ritual cannibalism.”
Neanderthals emerged from Africa and hunted their way across Eurasia from the Atlantic coast to the Ural mountains between 400,000 years ago and 40,000 years ago before becoming extinct.
While Neanderthals are often portrayed as less intelligent, but stronger relatives of modern humans, it is now known that our cousins had similar sized brains, developed complex stone tools, wore jewellery, and maintained “a culture” that we find represented in their cave art.
The bones of nine Neanderthals have been found in a previously unexplored part of Guattari Cave, Central Italy, along with the remains of many long-gone animal inhabitants of the area. However, the find undermines the view of our nearest relatives as the apex predator of their ecosystem. Instead, the bones were gnawed on by hyenas that are thought to have dragged them into the cave.
Guattari Cave in Mount Circeo has been a rich source of information on Pleistocene Europe since the discovery of Neanderthal and animal bones there in 1939. Eight years later, however, it was reasonable to think we’d learned everything the cave system had to teach us about human occupation of Europe. However, in 2019 scientists began exploring a part of the cave that had been blocked off in a landslide.