The Neanderthals of the Prado Vargas cave, located in the town of Cornejo, in the Merindad de Sotoscueva (Burgos), were the first collectors of fossils. A recent study published in the international journal “Quaternary” revealed that Neanderthals in this cave of Ojo Guareña cfossils of marine origin from the Cretaceous were collected 46,000 years ago and they moved them inside this cavity where they had their camp.
This work demonstrates, for the first time, that a species other than ours was capable of creating the first collection of fossils. The Prado Vargas Cave site is part of the Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC) and the Natural Monument of Ojo Guareña, one of the largest karst systems in Europe with more than 100 kilometers of chasms, caves and galleries.
The scientific article, which has just been published, It was coordinated by the professor from the University of Burgos (UBU), Marta Navazo.and researchers from this institution, the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (Cenieh), the University of Malaga and the Museum of Human Evolution (MEH) collaborated. This work consisted of analyzing the fifteen marine fossils discovered since 2016 during the systematic excavation of level 4 of the site, which dates back 46,000 years, reports the Burgos academic institution in a press release.
The taxonomic study of the fossils made it possible to conclude that they all belong to the phylum of molluscs, except one of them, which corresponds to the phylum in which sea urchins are included. Among molluscs, half belong to the class of bivalves and the other half to that of gastropods. Within the gastropods we see that the family best represented with six specimens is that of the tylostoma.
Tylostomes are fossils belonging to the same class as modern snails. and which can reach 10 centimeters, they have a holostome shell, with several whorls, the last of which is larger. The tylostome fossils found in the Prado Vargas cave were snails that lived on the surface of the shallow seabed millions of years ago.
The formation of these marine fossils occurred in the Late Cretaceous, between 100 and 66 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs. Several million years before the appearance of the first hominids. At that time, this entire part of the Iberian Peninsula was submerged and part of a sea.
It was the precipitation of calcium carbonate from these animals that created limestone rocks at the bottom of this sea. Over time, tectonic movements and the erosive action of water lifted and modified these limestone layers, so that when Neanderthals arrived at Ojo Guareña, they found a landscape and cave system very similar to the current one, in which some Cretaceous deposits containing these fossils were preserved.
The Neanderthals of the Prado Vargas cave, in their continuous journeys across the territory in search of food, wood to make their javelins or flint to carve their tools, located several deposits where these fossils emerge. These groups of Neanderthals collected them and transported them to the cave, located between two and four kilometers from the different fossil outcrops.
Why did they collect fossils?
For prehistoric collectors, these fossils must have had a special character beyond the object itself, since only one of the fossils bears marks indicating that it was used as a striker to make their stone tools.
This led the research team to propose different hypotheses to explain this behavior, among which they could have been collected simply for aesthetic reasons because they liked the shape of the fossils: another option they are considering is that they were used as elements to exchange within the group or with other groups of Neanderthals, to play in their own camp or to reinforce cultural identity as an element of social cohesion of the group itself, to the extent that these fossils linked them directly to the territory in which they lived.
It is possible that the collection of these fossils was carried out by the children of the group. Studies of our species have shown that the trait of collecting objects develops during childhood. According to experts, collecting behavior appears in children between the ages of 3 and 6, when they begin to become self-aware, and continues until the age of 12. During puberty, collecting continues, but to a lesser extent, and after age 18, this behavior weakens and does not reappear until age 40.
The publication of the article is part of the investigations carried out on the site of the Prado Vargas cave. This site has been systematically excavated since 2016 and, to date, more than 15,000 remains dating back to 46,000 years ago have been recovered. During the 2019 campaign, a small molar of Vera, an eight-year-old Neanderthal girl, was found, which is to date the oldest human remains discovered in the Ojo Guareña karst complex.
The team is co-led by UBU prehistory professor Marta Navazo; Cenieh researcher Alfonso Benito; and MEH coordinator and associate professor of prehistory at UBU, Rodrigo Alonso. It is completed by a dozen students from the academic institution of Burgos who carry out their doctoral theses and other research work on this site.
