Archaeologists have found a Neanderthal “grandfather” of Stonehenge in France – RIA Novosti

MOSCOW, May 25 – RIA Novosti Scientists have found in the south of France, a cave inhabited by Neanderthals, have built about 175 thousand years ago in its stone structure of several concentric circles of stones, indicating the extraordinary. ” advancement of the “first Europeans, according to a paper published in the journal Nature.

Today, it is believed that man has mastered the art of building and began to erect buildings and architectural monuments only with the transition to agriculture and related settled and semi-settled habitation. How, when and why this happened is one of the most interesting questions in the history of mankind.

As said Jacques Jaubert from the University of Bordeaux (France), for this reason, very few people tried to look for any architectural traces related with Neanderthals – as scientists believe, these ancient people were exclusively hunter-gatherers who migrated permanently and did not need the kind of buildings kakogo-libo.

it turned out that it is not – Jaubert and his colleagues found in a cave Brunikel in the south-west of France traces of giant structures, created by human hands. Age of rocks in which traces of a series of concentric circles of stones were found, it is 175 million years old, which means that it was not built by our ancestors and Neanderthals.

This building, a kind of Neanderthal “Stonehenge”, is a circle with a diameter of 6.7 meters, assembled from four layers of “bricks” made of burnt pieces of stalagmites, that the ancient builders probably mined in the cave . Inside this circle, and next to it there are several similar structures, within which the bones of animals.

As scientists believe, some of the smaller structures likely represented the centers in which to cook, but the destiny of a great circle have been found so far It remains a mystery to us. This “Stonehenge” could play like some kind of religious role in the life of the inhabitants Brunikelya and some unknown to us function.

In any case, this construction as claimed Jaubert and his colleagues claim to the role ancient architectural structures in the history of mankind. She talks about the complex organization of Neanderthal communities, allowing them to build such structures, which once again refutes the myth that Neanderthals were stupid and less developed than our ancestors, the Cro-Magnons.