Neanderthal child’s skeleton buried 41,000 years ago may solve long-standing mystery

Their conclusion? The corpse of a 2-year-old Neanderthal was deliberately laid in a pit dug in the sediment.
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The absence of marks from carnivores who may have tried to scavenge an uncovered body and the fact that the bones were relatively unscattered with little weathering suggested that the body was rapidly covered, the researchers said. The remains were also well preserved (better than the bones from animals found in the same layer of earth) despite belonging to a child. Children’s skeletons typically have more delicate bones.
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The position of the skeleton also suggested the child had been placed there intentionally. The head, which pointed to the east, was raised higher than the rest of the body even though the land inclined to the west.
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“The origin of funerary practices has important implications for the emergence of so-called modern cognitive capacities and behavior,” the study said. “These new results provide important insights for the discussion about the chronology of the disappearance of the Neanderthals, and the behavioral capacity, including cultural and symbolic expression, of these humans.”
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The researchers from the French National Center for Scientific Research, the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and the University of the Basque Country in Spain identified 47 bones belonging to the child’s skeleton that hadn’t been previously identified.
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One piece of bone was carbon dated and found to be 41,000 years old. Researchers confirmed the bone belonged to a Neanderthal by analyzing the fragment’s mitochondrial DNA.
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The child was one of eight sets of skeletal remains found at the site.
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Death rites

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Potential evidence of burial has also been found in one of the most famous Neanderthal sites, the Shanidar cave in Kurdistan, located in northern Iraq. This site was home to the remains of 10 Neanderthal men, women and children. They were found with ancient pollen clumps, suggesting that Neanderthals may have included flowers as part of their funeral rites.
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More recent excavations of the Shanidar cave have turned up more Neanderthal remains, which early research has suggested were deliberately buried.
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Other research has suggested that there was considerable diversity in how European Neanderthals treated their dead kin in the period immediately preceding their disappearance roughly 40,000 years ago — including cannibalism.
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The team of researchers said today’s analytical standards should be applied to the other skeletal remains at La Ferrassie site to assess whether they too were buried.
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