Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bog obam here. No matter how much evidence we have to the contrary, Homo sapiens think ourselves very civilized. In fact, we often talk about the other human species that used to share this planet as if they were as far removed from us as armadillos or penguins. But Neanderthals, for instance, did a lot of the same things as their modern human contemporaries. They could laugh. Plus they made jewelry, string, glue,
and art. Have you ever tried to make string? It's actually a bit tricky. You twist two or more bits of fiber together while at the same time twisting the individual strands in opposite directions so that the fibers locked together. It requires incredible fine motor skills and some basic mathematical understanding, plus a pensiont for civil engineering and Acording to a study published in the April edition of the journal Scientific Reports,
Neanderthals checked all these boxes. The researchers discovered a fragment of cordage, probably between forty one thousand and fifty two thousand years old, and just the width of a child's pinky fingernail at an archaeological site in France. The fragment consists of three bundles of fiber twisted together but probably
made from the inner bark of an evergreen tree. The string was found stuck to a small stone tool and could possibly have served as a handle for the tool, or it could have been part of the string bag that held it. According to the study, the techniques used to make this fragment of string suggest quote much larger fiber technology, which means they could have been making clothes,
rope mats, and nets prior to this discovery. The oldest fiber fragments ever discovered were found in modern day Israel, probably made around nineteen thousand years ago. And beyond all that, a study published in the December twenty issue of the journal Scientific Reports finds that Neanderthal's almost certainly buried their dead.
For more than a century. Archaeologists have been unearthing buried skeletons of Neanderthals in Europe and parts of Asia, but many of them were excavated using techniques that would make a modern archaeologist wins, and given the way they were exhumed, it's been exceptionally difficult to tell whether the burials were intentional, but it's been assumed by some researchers that Neanderthals weren't smart enough to engage in symbolic behavior such as honoring
their dead with a burial. But a multidisciplinary team of researchers from France, Germany, and Spain reopened the case of a forty one thousand year old skeleton of a two year old child unearthed between nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy three in a cave in southwestern France. The team re excavated the site where the child was found and reviewed
the notes from the original dig. The researchers found the bones to be relatively unscattered, meaning animals likely hadn't messed with the body, and they didn't seem to have been weathered by the elements, which suggests rapid burial after death. In addition, the bones seemed to have been placed intentionally, with the head pointing east and uphill of the other bones,
even though the incline of the hill sloped west. This study indicates that the child was intentionally deposited in the ground not long after death, and because the dating of the bones indicates the Toddler died not long before Neanderthals winked out of existence. This discovery brings up questions about when Neanderthals adopted funerary practice and how widely it spread before their extinction. Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields
and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this months of other topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Rate, you visit the our heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H