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On level 3 – the key find was 35 crania of large herbivores, all from species with antlers or horns. Most were from aurochs and bison; five were deer; and two were narrow-nosed rhinoceroses (a now-extinct species that liked the same terrain as said vole before going extinct about 40,000 years ago
The archaeologists didn’t find the animals’ jaws and teeth in the cave. However, over a third of the crania they did find still had their antlers or horns, as well as the eye and nose bones. They were missing their cheekbones, though
Scientists speculate why with no consensus on the reason.
During the Last Ice Age, Neanderthals used a small cave in the Iberian Peninsula to accumulate the crania of large ungulates (bison, aurochs
This work examines the possible behaviour of Neanderthal groups at the Cueva Des-Cubierta (central Spain) via the analysis of the latter’s archaeological assemblage. Alongside evidence of Mousterian lithic industry.
Level 3 of the cave infill was found to contain an assemblage of mammalian bone remains dominated by the crania of large ungulates, some associated with small hearths. The scarcity of post-cranial elements, teeth, mandibles and maxillae, along with evidence of anthropogenic modification of the crania (cut and percussion marks), indicates that the carcasses of the corresponding animals were initially processed outside the cave, and the crania were later brought inside.
This behaviour seems to have no subsistence-related purpose but to be more symbolic in its intent.
