Neanderthals put 35 skulls in this cave…. why?

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At Cueva des Cubierta, central Spain, archaeologists uncovered 35 skulls, all of horned animals in one cave chamber. What were Neanderthals doing with all these skulls? Are they the subtle traces of a Neanderthal ritual site?
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
2:54 the problem with ritual
5:10 The site
8:02 What were Neanderthals doing
10:36 other funky stuff
12:27 other odd sites
15:53 Neanderthal art nearby
Sources:
Baquedano, Enrique, et al. “A symbolic Neanderthal accumulation of large herbivore crania.” Nature Human Behaviour, vol. 7, no. 3, 26 Jan. 2023, pp. 342-352, doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01....
Hoffmann, D. L., et al. “U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art.” Science, vol. 359, no. 6378, 23 Feb. 2018, pp. 912-915, doi.org/10.1126/science.aap7778.
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[@StefanMilo]

Sign up for a 14-day free trial and enjoy all the amazing features MyHeritage has to offer bit.ly/StefanMilo

[@samg6238]

Have you seen that reddit post on r/fossils of the guy who found a human mandible in the travertine tile at his parents house?

[@MrAnofor]

are the skulls in your office real ?

[@haraldschmidt2953]

Reminds me more about decorating a home. Imagine that flowers are added. What I do not understand is that in other areas of the world, neanderthals are living in caves and they should have used it for rituals

[@abody499]

I love things like My Heritage and all the ancestry DNA things. Apart from the fun in it, there's a great practical function too - think Doomsday Book, but with way more information, and all online and easy to access. So cool!

[@Gregemio]

Just subbed for more Stefan Lore

[@inevitablepebble7589]

Just want to say how much I appreciate you subtitling your videos manually. So many history videos lose their impact for hard of hearing individuals when auto captioning is involved, so thank you!! 😊

[@StefanMilo]

I always do it for every video. Hope I didn't miss anything

[@liverdiseased]

@@StefanMiloit’s so sincerely appreciated by me & many more of your viewers!!! i have auditory processing disorder, and i can understand written words much faster than verbal language, so i can only keep up with the information presented with your thorough & accurate captions. thank you so much for the wonderful work you publish on this channel :)

[@e.k.4508]

It's also a great way to learn proper English

[@Jayman2800]

As someone else who is hard-of-hearing, I second this!

[@ArtisticlyAlexis]

Or you have to keep the volume low because your rambunctious kid just tired themselves out next to you on the couch!

[@WaterShowsProd]

The old ritual of people making comments that criticise archaeologists for inferring ritual.

[@GardenofEdens]

i would guess that you could even say they may have gathered the skulls out of appreciation for the hunt. brushing your teeth is even an ritual .

[@patavinity1262]

I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the word 'infer'.

[@infinitemonkey917]

@@patavinity1262 Why are you unsure?

[@Google_Does_Evil_Now]

​@@patavinity1262what are you inferring, apart from your own impoliteness? 😂

[@kingcosworth2643]

Futurama made a great quip about this, an old pizza paddle was used to prey to the God's

[@NORTH02]

There was a very interesting Aurginacian site (the people who more or less replaced the neanderthals) that contained a ritualized bison skull. The deposition context suggests that the skull was put on a stick after being dismembered. I cover it in my video this weekend! Great video Stefan, I love this topic.

[@tonydai782]

Yo North02

[@LoreTunderin]

Love your videos

[@shaunsaintey1793]

Two of my absolute favourite KZbinrs right here

[@ThursonJames]

Shoutout to North02

[@Toxicpoolofreekingmascul-lj4yd]

As a child I was shipwrecked with some other kids and we put a pig head on a stick and worshipped it as a god.

[@susanpatterson7088]

As a person raised in a hunting "culture", I can tell you that my father had the horns of every deer and elk that he ever killed proudy displayed on the garage. This ritual is quite common even now amoung modern hunting culture. What really struck me about your video was the rhino horns and how few they were compared to cattle and elk or deer. To me this shows that there was more effort in obtaining this type of horn than the others. That the wild cattle would be honored above others is very like the bears skins that were kept by my grandparents. Bears are so much harder to hunt than many other animals and the cost in danger and or lives was very much appreciated, from the stories my father had to tell. We also ate all the game he hunted and provided for us. In all I love your videos and enjoy your commentary!

[@gerharddeusser9103]

Thank you for this comment. The connection between the effort, the skills (including cooperation and the resulting social bonds) of hunting these horned animals had to be mentioned.!

[@pabs7373]

Here in the UK, anyone who hunts deer will often keep the head as a trophy. In the rest of Europe, where wild boar are prevalent, there are many boar heads displayed in bars and hotels. In Britain there are many public houses with names such as The Stag's Head, The Boar's Head and so on.

[@Sool101]

​@@pabs7373such an interesting topic. And when you'd ask the person who shot the animal about why it's hanging on the wall over there. What would the general answer be?

[@TD05SSLegacy]

Yeah, just look at properties in Montana and you will a high percentage of the time find at least some or multiple horns or heads on the wall. Ubiquitous. Jump on Zillow and see.

[@Martiandawn]

Hah! I just posted a comment very similar to this one. I forgot to mention the bears that my dad hunted. The skin of the largest one still adorns the wall of the living room in the home he shared with my mom. We also ate all of the game. With three males out hunting for deer and elk every year (my dad, my brother, and I), wild game made quite a contribution to our diet.

[@davidianhowe]

They were living it up without a cellphone in sight.

[@vladimirkossowtsev6972]

yeah, atlantian horn-mobile-4g system :)

[@mike3020]

Belive me or not , been there done that ! Had a blast.....

[@user-hy6cp6xp9f]

They were playing subway surfer on their Oldowan iPads

[@brooklyna007]

I feel like they would happily trade places with us here in the modern world. We doth complain too much. Their lives were hard and brutal.

[@Mark_GL]

The simple fact that they left the horns instead of using them for tool making shows that is ritual, plus the amount of skulls make it obvious, it's a trophy room.

[@hpbear101]

My favorite ritual, a cup of coffee and learning about Neanderthals!

[@patrickday4206]

And denosovians

[@UKfeath]

i've been a neanderthal lover since i was 6 yo. i envisioned neanderthals doing things that science laughed at. then science started catching up. and today, science screamed past what i envisioned. today, neanderthals made me very happy.

[@ethank.6602]

Neanderphile

[@UKfeath]

@@ethank.6602 proudly!

[@grantschiff7544]

Neanderthals couldn't form a social group larger than an inbred family. Inbreeding because so bad that they regressed and died out as easy prey to the homosapians. The Neanderthals were intelligent, dangerous cannibals that would hunt you and eat you.

[@_Ben___]

2 people participating in art 20k years apart. Yet if I did it, I'd be vandalising a historic site.

[@timmccarthy9917]

"if" I did it, this guy is definitely banned from several historic sites

[@evank7858]

I have this same thought about some graffiti I find when exploring. "John C. Doty, July 2nd, 1845" behind a bolder in the middle of nowhere is fascinating to me, as a Gen Z meme will be in 150 years.

[@esther1405]

😅The latin graffiti on the walls of ruins of Pompeii!!!

[@Giloup92]

Napoléon soldiers’ graffiti on the pyramids!

[@_Ben___]

viking graffiti in hagia sophia

[@claudiaxander]

The opening 'neanderthal' footage is actually from 9 January 1988, when in an FA Cup tie against Arsenal at Highbury, 41 people were arrested for rioting after the Herd and the Millwall Bushwackers clashed.

[@bruce-le-smith]

no one likes us, we don't care

[@dukeon]

🤣

[@glenndonald7557]

One nil, to the Arsenal, one nil, to the……

[@cyclingnerddelux698]

Wrong. I can vouch for the fact that it was filmed after Germany was eliminated in the first round of the World Cup in 2018.

[@stephanieyee9784]

Haha, not outside the realm of possibility.

[@teresamerkel7161]

I live in the Western U.S. Trophies are standard for hunters. There is a certain ritual meaning to collecting trophies. "Look what I got. I'm a great hunter."

[@LuxisAlukard]

Stefan lore: English guy with Serbian name, met his Vietnamese wife in Spain. Talking about globalisation :)

[@RandOm-hr5jn]

Makes really huge difference if you travel on foot from cave to cave or use an airplane, the covered distances are absurdly different, even fancy ocean faring ships looked at months to years on water with good odds of perishing, now you zip around in hours.

[@bigbasil1908]

@@RandOm-hr5jn If you zip around in Boeings, there are fair odds of perishing, especially if its the 737 max

[@urbannsquirrel]

And now lives in America!

[@conlethberry1236]

And lived in Texas (I think) now up Seattle way (am I correct Stefan Milo?).

[@Antikyth]

Sounds like my family! Been moving countries all the time for at least 4 generations... The longest I've ever lived in one country total is less than 7 years. I'm not a child or anything, my family has just moved around so much, as did my parents when they were young, and their parents, and theirs.

[@jamalwaked]

It amazes me that people are so quick to assume that sites are meaningless or only what you see on the surface. Not even allowing the chance to consider a different possibility is the quickest way to never discover anything new. You lose nothing by considering a new idea, but you lose any chance at learning by being quick to dismiss it

[@satkinson5505]

Never miss a chance to make up a good story. 👍

[@rizkyadiyanto7922]

ancient people doing something: its a ritual!

[@kylehart8829]

​@@rizkyadiyanto7922People doing something repeatedly in any specific way without a clear logical reason is literally, by definition, a ritual. That is what that word means. If people in a certain area do things one way and people in a different area do the same thing differently, but each community is internally consistent, then by any possible definition those cultures have different *ritual culture*. I think you just don't have any idea what the word ritual means.

[@nolongerlistless]

Clearly it was a museum/research and education facility for the youth or for prehistoric tourists/visiting aliens/homo sapiens...

[@cyclingnerddelux698]

​@@satkinson5505Never miss a chance to be a duschbag. 👍

[@braysive4380]

People that mock the broad interpretation of "ritual" used by archaeologists are ignorant to the meaning of the term and blind to it's modern day to day manifestations. Excellent video as always but because it elaborates on that interpretation of ritual so well, I'm sharing this video hard.

[@kersebleptes1317]

In my experience, archaeologists do a fair bit of the mocking themselves. Because they understand how easily one person's "ritual" explanation can be shot down by another person's "everyday" explanation!

[@Martiandawn]

I suspect the mockery is rooted in the perception that archaeologists tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds, and thus their lived experience leaves them ill-equipped to interpret artifacts left behind by long-dead people who engaged in strenuous manual labor to survive on a day-to-day basis. For people whose lived experience today includes a significant amount of strenuous manual labor, the "ritual use" claim comes across as condescending, and is read as implying "irrational superstition" 😉 That public perception of archaeologists as effete and elitist might be a tad unfair, but I will say that very few of the academics I encountered in grad school came from a working-class background. Most were themselves the children of academics, or came from families with enough wealth to indulge the scholarly pursuits of their offspring without taking out a second mortgage on the family home 🤣

[@vyvianalcott1681]

I wouldn't describe putting a cool thing I found, hunted, or made on display as a "ritual" even if I do it often. Just putting something down isn't a ritual. I suppose you could say harvesting the skulls from their kills was ritual, but we don't actually know that. We know they did it sometimes, not that they did it ritually. So like yeah there are modern day equivalents you can draw to, you can say "brushing your teeth is a ritual," but just putting things places is not a ritual. That's not what the word means, unless archaeologists are just making up definitions which would be really annoying.

[@nurmihusa7780]

And there’s the difference between the public’s understanding of the term “theory” and a scientist’s.

[@mina_loi]

​@@Martiandawnthank you

[@user-un8tv1pp8m]

18:50 "...bumbling around, consuming calories..." Well, they did that too, one would assume. I did that today.

[@urbannsquirrel]

Lol

[@grantschiff7544]

Did you eat a family member for breakfast or produce offspring with a close family member? The Neanderthal did.

[@ellen4956]

I also wanted to comment on the cave painting; there are some symbols that are repeated in many caves, and that divided rectangle is one of them. Genevieve von Petzinger and her husband have been studying these for years, and found 32 symbols that are found across vast distances, and sometimes separated by thousands of years. She has done two Ted Talks about it and written a book called The First Signs.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

The dots show up EVERYWHERE too.

[@brooklyna007]

Those rectangles look like pens. Which could imply that humans were keeping wild animals for later consumption long before domestication.

[@ellen4956]

@@brooklyna007 I can see what you mean. But they also look like windows, and also like a floor plan for a simple shelter. Whatever it means, there are a lot of them!

[@jesenjin8467]

Have you heard about Veternica in Croatia? Excavated in 1970s, and there were stacked bear skulls in a niche in a cave wall. Also dated to Neanderthal period.

[@christophersnedeker]

I heard of the cave in Switzerland but not this.

[@jesenjin8467]

@@christophersnedeker One with buried bear skull? Something like a cyst/chest-like space with skull? I think Mirko Malez cited that example, or someone else, while talking about Veternica

[@jesenjin8467]

@@christophersnedeker yeah, that is the one. Drachenloch

[@LDProductionsClass]

That gneiss pun rocked

[@bruce-le-smith]

nice

[@CeleriaRosencroix]

The question is: if this *was* just hunting refuse, why would the horns be left behind? Horn is an extremely useful material, and I have a hard time imagining the Neanderthals did not realize this. As such, it strikes me as necessary for there to be some sort of symbolic meaning to "pay for" the horns, legitimizing what would otherwise be wasteful.

[@propagandalf123]

As a Student of prehistoric archaeology, I also often encounter the "ritual trope" first hand. For example my first paper I wrote was debunking an archaeologist who argued that despite the dozens of sets of armour, including horse armour, despite hundreds of swords, spears, thousands of arrows that were found in kofun era (4-8th century) japanese graves (sadly close to no bones, because of acid soil) and depictions in clay statues and korean murals (the horse and armour types reached japan through korea in the kofun era), that warfare was nonexistent, and that all these weapons were just symbolic, and that horses expecially were never used in warfare. Her reasoning showed that she simply had no Idea how weapons, armour and warfare works. I am usually very sceptic of supposed rituals, but here, it seems like a good explanation, would also be one of my top interpretations. Just to not give "ritual" as an explanation I'd maybe offer the interpretation of hunters collection (which is kind of ritualised thoug). Hunters today also like to keep the cranium of the animals they shot, and the more horned, the better

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

Think of what those extinct Irish stag racks would be like!

[@17cirilo]

Just a note from a native Spanish speaker, it should be Cueva Descubierta (all together) for it to be translated as Uncovered Cave in English. Other than that, amazing video, as always

[@JuanMiPibernus]

Yeah, what a weird typo.

[@richardashby6981]

For better or worse, this reflects a normal trend in linguistic transformation (or mutilation). Spanish speakers, for example, will recognize the word "bistek" as a phonetic amalgamation of the English words "beef" and "steak". It is also the reason why few modern speakers of these two languages can make any sense of The Canterbury Tales or El Cantar de Mio Cid as originally written.

[@seamussc]

I was a bit confused by that, as a guy with only a midling knowledge of Spanish. I knew cueva and cubierta, but assumed "des" by itself referred to a non-Castilian romance language of Spain I didn't know, lol.

[@chaussettes99]

Cave paintings will always be my favorite aspect of history as they come from such an insanely long time ago and made by people who have none of the comforts or privileges of modern life. And the fact they are still there is so cool. Imagine painting something on a dark cave wall and 65,000 years later its still around and people look at it

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

I like the idea that with flickering firelight, some of the painted herd animals have an illusion gf movement.

[@olddog-fv2ox]

Ive noticed all these prehistoric cave paintings never include pictures of salads, vegan Neanderthals and cromagnons were hard to find back then

[@brandyjean7015]

Could be props for acting out the story of the successful hunt, by firelight. Thats a ritual I would enjoy attending.

[@olliefoxx7165]

Yes, especially if the animal was significant in some way or the hunt extraordinary. They would use the actual bones to reenact the experience to capture the magic.

[@timmccarthy9917]

The fact that neanderthals existed in Spain and Uzbekistan makes me confront the reality that the neanderthals almost certainly had distinct ethnic groups. Modern Spaniards and Uzbeks are the same species but quite different cultures and languages.

[@kraekennedy]

Nothing makes me happier than a new Stefan Milo video. My fascination with archaeology has only grown more and more since I found this channel about 6 months before the pandemic started. I always have so much more to ponder after each video. Thank you for all your efforts Stefan!

[@genefidz2426]

Coming from New Zealand where recorded human history goes back no more than ~800 years, I always find this stuff from the deep past so interesting. Thank you Stefan, keep em comin

[@machematix]

The desk I had my computer on was from the 1500s... wasn't worth anything as an antique because it had so many scratches and stains. My dad always laughed when he saw a "Historic building" in NZ that was from the 1850s.

[@monkian]

I have this image of neanderthal wive rolling her eyes as her beloved comes back with another one and the ensuing nagging about becoming a horder.

[@vb8801]

I actually hate this comment, so thanks for that

[@perceivedvelocity9914]

Haha. I can definitely imagine that.

[@perceivedvelocity9914]

​@@vb8801When I lose something, I normally find it under the couch. You should check if your sense of humor is under there.

[@dukeon]

The Funko Pops of the pleistocene

[@LimeyLassen]

And thus, the "man cave" was born

[@TheGabrielbowater]

Time to partake in the "watching the new Milo video" ritual

[@lordportellen788]

Again a brilliant video. And I can't emphasize enough how humble and non-argumentative you are while being knowledgeable Stefan. I love how you take potential criticism, thoroughly explain your thoughts and ideas while not getting defensive or combative as so many others. It's very mature, constructive and adds a breath of fresh air to the field. I'm looking forward to every episode. Keep up the good work!

[@shawnadyment]

Other than rituals, I am also thinking it could be some proud Neanderthals displaying their hunting abilities (my dad is exactly like this, displaying the skulls of animals), or I also thought maybe a sort of storytime/schooling for the Neanderkids? My biggest dream in life is to observe them, undetected, with time travelling

[@bruce-le-smith]

Neanderkids! In Neanderkindergarten!

[@joeasher2876]

Having read the Wragg-Sykes book my first guess would be ritual, but I would also consider that it might be a leather tanning area. Brains are a good source of tannins. Once the skulls are smashed open to access the brains then you'd need somewhere to put your skins while the brains soak into them. You might want to put it in a cave so that you could go out and do other stuff. Put some thorns over the front of the cave (boma style) and they should remain pretty safe there while you go hunting and foraging. You might not put them in your home (cave, tent or whatever) to avoid attracting predators. A big flat rock would be a good surface to tan the skin. But a cave could also be cold storage, brains tend not to decompose as quickly due to being encased in a skull. They might even be okay for a few days, so might be treated as a delayed food source after you have consumed the meat over a couple of days. They might want to eek that out to a week or so by putting it somewhere cold. Or as a meal that you could carry to your overnight hunting lodge (cave) and eat if you didn't catch anything. Like a modern hunter might go camping but bring some jerky or beans.

[@kelleycavan6911]

I really enjoyed that book and her interview with the podcast called Travels Through Time is excellent and the reason I bought her book

[@steve7231]

Seems odd that ritual would be so important to sapiens but completely absent in neanderthals. Of course they had rituals!

[@keithklassen5320]

Given that Neanderthals are a precursor to modern humans, and are extinct, it's reasonable to assume that they might be less developed than us, which raises the question about ritual. I think they did, but my point is that I don't think it's so absurd to think that they might not have had ritual.

[@rizkyadiyanto7922]

what do you mean important? many people despise religion.

[@pansepot1490]

⁠​⁠​⁠@@keithklassen5320 Neanderthals are not a “precursor”. They split from the common family tree modern humans descend from and took their own evolutionary path. Kind of siblings or cousins. Neanderthals and homo sapiens coexisted and even interbred so one it’s not a “precursor” of the other.

[@gloriascientiae7435]

@@keithklassen5320 Not necessarily. It could just be an unfortunate chain of events. Take dinosaurs as an example. They were not at all underdeveloped, but highly specialised.

[@Bildgesmythe]

​@@keithklassen5320NO! They were not precursors!

[@Jobe-13]

I always imagined pre-historic humans, no matter what species, always engaged in some kind of seasonal festivals and ceremonial gatherings.

[@satkinson5505]

I have always imagined them being more intelligent and superior in every way to modern humans. At least since I stopped believing in the fairy tale called evolution. Because if humans are devolving instead of evolving, that makes sense.

[@user-bi7vl4jm1h]

@@satkinson5505 you were in special needs classes growing up, huh?

[@christophersnedeker]

This may be more of a homo sapiens thing. Neanderthals seem to have lived in more isolated communities.

[@GIGADEV690]

@@satkinson5505 Devolving haha it's still evolution your some good created us from ribs believer.

[@grantschiff7544]

Neanderthals didn't live in big enough groups for festivals. They lived in small, inbred, cannibalistic groups. They gained no benefits from the inbreeding and died out an evolutionary dead-end. Intelligent and dangerous, the Neanderthals were finished off by homosapians.

[@marcmarc172]

Hey im glad you exist. Thank you.

[@sterkar99]

You’re welcome marc.

[@pencilpauli9442]

Brilliant as always, Stefan! Just remember that because everyone one takes the piss out of archaeologists because archaeologists say it's always a ritual, it doesn't necessarily follow that it wasn't a ritual.

[@Sunmonks]

Every time a new one drops, my day gets better. Thanks Stefan!

[@MrChillerNo1]

rituals are defined by repetition. it can be simple, but it has to be repeated. Returing to a place to eat ripe fruits, knowing they will be ripe at that time can be understood as a ritual. Culture by its simplest definition is reasoned behavior. Everything else is just a complications, more complex versions of these simple basiscs. Now on this basis a lot of animal behavior might also fall into culture. Is that so crazy? Is it so crazy to believe that there was more culture and ritual to our our predecessors already before we were though ourselves as humans? We humans are animals, sometimes we like to think higher of ourselves for the complexity of our thoughts, but in essence we are animals.

[@urbannsquirrel]

I would say a repeated action is a habit, but a repeated action with significance to the doer is a ritual

[@dmitrystrelnikov4653]

The Teshik Tosh cave and the Teshik Tosh stone you showed on the video, are two different places distanced for at least 200 km from each other.

[@livingbeings]

Thinking of the northern Midwest USA, this tradition has apparently continued to the present day, with popular pub decor being taxidermied deer heads mounted to the walls.

[@dmacarthur5356]

Right? I'm watching the video and saying to myself "what's the big mystery here?" Hunter's collect racks, it's that simple to me.

[@livingbeings]

@@dmacarthur5356 I think that Stefan and other Brits don’t understand this because there is zero hunting in modern Europe. He needs to go on an anthropological safari to Wisconsin or Michigan’s upper peninsula and everything will make sense.

[@dmacarthur5356]

@@livingbeings Agreed. My grandpa had more antlers nailed to his barn door than that cave 😂

[@magnemoe1]

Ask to enter the back room to see the rest of the animal :o)

[@charleshash4919]

Yes, and to take this idea to it's extreme, "The Horniest Bar in Town" in Columbus, Montana is the New Atlas Bar. It's regular customers visit every so often for a chat with a shaman (one of the girls that run the place) and a ritual sip of a malt or corn beverage beneath walls lined with dust-covered taxidermic wonders from around the world.

[@diktatoralexander88]

Those vintage prehistory films are actually spot on, the visuals.

[@stefanieherrmann3432]

If you read Victor Turner you will actual understand that the human brain needs rituals. And therefore there is no way Neanderthalers did not have rituals to mark important moments in their life circle and in the annual circle. Or to change a quote from my tutor "Not Neanderthalers are primitive but our knowledge of them" I am a cultural anthologist we are even worse than arqueologists when it comes to rituals.

[@StefanMilo]

I think you’re 100% right. To be a human is to have rituals. In some way we all do them

[@Cantskatemcd]

Learning about Neanderthal culture makes me as a linguist so sad that we can't know anything at all about Neanderthal language

[@StefanMilo]

That's actually crazy to think about. Imagine how far their language had diverged from ours with perhaps hundreds of thousands of years of separation?

[@David-gh6vp]

I believe studies were done on [the position of] their larynx two or three decades ago, and it was concluded that their language was more limited than ours. Still, they may have relied more on kinesics. You have to adore their burial rituals, although I think these skulls were trophies, or props for memory, and for Art.

[@grantschiff7544]

Is that the culture of cannibalism and breeding with close family members? Those were the main factors in Neanderthal society. 😊

[@Aneurin_Hunt]

Don't you means languages?

[@milesfromnowhere1985]

I'm a Norse pagan. I do rituals for the changes of the seasons with special objects, idols, fires, etc. My morning coffee is also a ritual. Butchering my livestock is also a ritual.

[@georgehanson2978]

That 65,000-year-old Neanerthal cave painting sure looks like a depiction of domesticated animals in a corral, one with a water bowl, surrounded by cultivated crops.

[@Martiandawn]

My dad was an avid hunter, right up into his late seventies. Over the course of decades, he killed a lot of deer and elk. He kept the skulls and antlers of most of the animals he killed. He had the most impressive ones mounted for display inside his home. Others, he placed atop fence posts around his vegetable garden. Most ended up stored in a couple of sheds attached to his workshop out back. I imagine that an archaeologist excavating the site of my dad's home 70,000 years from now might speculate that all those skulls, placed in various locations, had some sort of ritual significance, or were evidence of symbolic thought. Well, my dad wasn't out there performing rites to the hunting gods with those skulls. The skulls served as reminders of past achievement, and, frankly, he just liked the way they looked. My dad was also a skilled mechanic and welder. In his spare time, he rebuilt engines, and made practical things like a couple of trailers he used to haul around firewood and my brother's motorcycles. One time, on a whim, he welded together some oversized bolts and springs to make a little "robot man" with an inordinately large phallus. I hesitate to think what a future archeologist would make of that thing 🤣

[@perceivedvelocity9914]

Thank you for sharing your story. The ending made me laugh.

[@bruce-le-smith]

haha "robot man fertility cult" obviously, there could be no other logical explanation

[@EmilyKinny]

Except that's literally a ritual... that's what Stefan was saying. A ritual doesn't have to be surrounded by prayer and elaborate religious connotations. It's simply a repeated behavior that has no practical reason to be done except that the objects and/or behavior clearly meant something to the doer. Those skulls meant something to your father; they were trophies, or stories, or even just... symbols of his own interests. A lot of people collect things, even "simple meaningless" things like rocks, and place them somewhere specific because they like them, which means they mean something to them, even if that meaning is just "I found this cool thing that I like." That is a ritual.

[@Martiandawn]

@@EmilyKinny Except that is not the commonly understood meaning of the word "ritual." Professional associations tend to adopt specialized jargon as a sort of shorthand to facilitate communications among their members - I get that. It's a common occurrence. Unfortunately, it also tends to create obstacles to wider understanding of that association's knowledge. That is anathema to the goal of scholarship. What word do archeologists use to describe actual religious rituals since they have coopted 'ritual' for a specialized definition? 🤣 If archeologists want to avoid confusion, they should at least adopt jargon that is not so easily misconstrued by the average layperson. In this case, Stefan used another term that seems to convey they idea effectively without any confusion; symbolic behavior. If archeologists said "repetitive symbolic behavior" instead of "ritual behavior" they can avoid sounding like idiots to the average layperson who understands the meaning of the latter term in its original context 😆

[@desiderata8811]

⁠@@Martiandawn. I agree with Emily. Not a church cult, but they had an inner reason to keep the upper part of the horned skulls. Archeology has gone far since 200 years ago. It’s not 100% accurate, but they can deduce a lot based on past discoveries. And, if new evidence is found, no problem leaving behind old conclusions.

[@markdevine7934]

100 years ago scientists had some crazy ideas. Imagine in 100 years from now what people will think about our understanding.

[@michaelcain2174]

I really like the way you approach a theory with relative objectivity, taking all aspects into account , debating with yourself on it’s validity

[@luciddaze248]

I appreciate the tone of this video! There is so much we will never know. There's evidence so we can draw conclusions but it's nearly impossible to know how accurate they are. It's refreshing to hear the thought processes, clarifications and honesty about the ambiguity of evidence.

[@luddewho]

Wait a minute.. Is Stefan slowly turning into Pavarotti??

[@semaj_5022]

Love this! I think even now we are only scratching the surface of what Neanderthals were really like and really capable of. Just because they didn't do or create all the same things as homo Sapiens doesn't mean they weren't as complex or developed; they just had different priorities.

[@cabwaylingo_]

i love that strange neanderthal glyph next to the box like drawing, would make a great tattoo!

[@johnnychaw9904]

Might I say Stefan has the most compassionate intros to his videos that I have ever had the pleasure of watching.

[@glennsimonsen8421]

I just love your style of presentation. Your enthusiasm is inspiring. Thank you.

[@brandonwinstead7137]

The first Man Cave

[@bruce-le-smith]

Occam's Razor, it was definitely bros trying to impress other bros

[@tomkatalenich8811]

Exactly what I needed today! Thanks, Stefan!

[@ruththinkingoutside.707]

Thank you for another video Stefan! Your content is SO appreciated!!

[@tobiasstewart5632]

“It kind of looks like horns to me” Stefan is channeling his inner graham. Most unhinged Milo video yet. I’m here for it.

[@urbannsquirrel]

He stops short of saying a lost civilization helped make it, so I'll give ut a pass. I don't find it hard to believe that a group of Neanderthals who were used to looking for nice rocks for tools and such wouldn't look at that interesting formation and go, "Oh, cool rock!"

[@ivanclark2275]

The meme about “archaeologists call everything ritual objects” pisses me off, frankly. Every human culture in history, without exception, has made extensive use of ritual objects. Some people seem to object to the ritual object label as if archaeologists use it as a thought terminating cliche, when in reality the opposite is true. Ritual object is a very broad category that invites further study and discourse, while “no dummy, it must have been a perfectly practical object with one use and no cultural meaning” is intellectual laziness.

[@jeanettewaverly2590]

This needed saying. Thank you!

[@myspleenisbursting4825]

Secularism and its consequences have been a disaster to the human race

[@garyhowardman]

As a deer and elk hunter, I've often found it curious why I and so many other hunters care so much about antlers. Why are they so magnetic, so majestic? After all, it's the meat that matters. But the attraction feels deep, deep as the hunter's instincts, deeper than modern, typical attractions. It's a weird, irrational attraction. That is why it feels so old to me; it's inexplicable, powerful, irrational, yet real. So yeah, I think these Neanderthals definitely ascribed some meaning to these skulls. Love your videos, Stefan. Thank you.

[@rasmussrensen2029]

Love the emotion you had when you spoke of the neanderthal/modern human cave art. I get the exact same feelings when i speak/think about history ❤ Keep up the good work Stefan! 💪

[@casualwhitey2777]

Yessssss I was waiting for another video 😭

[@jona.scholt4362]

Anyone else craving Thanksgiving food after that explanation? I desperately want some leftover turkey sandwiches right now!

[@jeanettewaverly2590]

I want a big bowl of turkey bits smushed uo with mashed potatoes, dressing, and cranberry sauce!

[@jona.scholt4362]

@@jeanettewaverly2590 Stop it! Now you're really making me hungry. I've already decided to pick up a rotisserie chicken after work, now I'll be getting everything else! 😁

[@jeanettewaverly2590]

@@jona.scholt4362 I still have a box of stuffing mix and a can of cranberry sauce left over from last Thanksgiving. We should have a potluck!

[@asdzt123]

Thank you very much. I wasn't expecting this episode to be about a site so close home. I happen to live 30 minutes away from the site, and I haven't visited it yet. Next guided tour I'm in.

[@AudraK]

It still blows my mind how Stefan only has half a million subs. Every video you make is mind blowing. Out of any of the educational channels I follow this one is by far the best. You put in the work, find the information, and convey it in such a digestible way. I can’t praise you enough. Please keep doing what you’re doing. The world is a better place when you’re making this information accessible and entertaining. ❤

[@mvdv6121]

Hi Stefan, great video as usual. Regarding the skulls and brains, I am no specialist on the subject, but an animals brain is used in the tanning of the hide. As an interesting point, it is said that every animal's brain contains just the right amount of 'chemical' to tan its hide. Considering the type of animals, those hides would be valuable to these people. Just a suggestion... maibe these were hide processing locations?

[@sdrtcacgnrjrc]

Good suggestion, but doesn't explain the lack of teeth

[@ercedwrds]

I would have loved if Stefan had gotten Jersey Mike's to sponsor the video. Would have been the smoothest sponsor segue ever.

[@bruce-le-smith]

especially a roast beef sub with bbq sauce while wearing a viking helmet with horns. i'm going to buy a sub right now

[@BreakingBarriers2DIY]

I truly love your humility and humour about comments and your ability to laugh about all the reactions.

[@markusmeldre]

I appreciate that your videos are dispelling the myths depicting neanderthals as primitive cavemen

[@Leo_ofRedKeep]

Skulls are good at holding flowers.

[@baref1959]

i think the difference between just showing off and ritual is how you treat the skull. paint it? write on it? do some art with it? might be a ritual. but if you are telling me that a man displaying hundreds of skulls on a wall or on a shelf is a ritual? you need to visit kentuckey or alabama in the US... lol

[@user-zt1ey8kp3m]

Love hearing your thoughts Stephan, thank you.

[@therob4371]

Awesome as always Stefan. I had a friend do my genealogy a while back. I can trace myself back to the first person whose last name was Morris in the new world. His name was John, and he arrived in Jamestown from Wales in 1619. It's amazing when you can feel grounded in history.

[@e.k.4508]

0:51 Early hoarding

[@StefanMilo]

Could be!

[@grantschiff7544]

Could this be the first evidence of Neanderthals storing food? Maybe they started to think beyond eating the kids over winter. Family members were the main food storage method of the Neanderthals.

[@SevenPlanets777-Scifi-tuber]

Hi Stefan, could you do an episode on the Neanderthal arrangements of broken stalag mites and tites at the Bruniquel cave in S.W. France? (Loved this one!)

[@TheMosv]

I wanna know more about the Neanderthal helicopter-bird-pirate cult, keep us updated on that!

[@ProvencaLeGaulois]

Hello Stefan, have you ever done a bit on the Bruniquel cave? This site is sort of an obsession of mine. Thank you for your work mate!

[@shalabazertheboltstruck8645]

Would be fun to one day find out that one of these ritualistic places was just a hideout for a prehistoric nutcase who, like in this example, just took all the skulls and hid it in a cave displayed beautifully for his nutcase pleasures hahah one can dream 😀 I'd watch that movie tho

[@jandobber316]

I think brain can be used for crude leather tanning but that doesn't change much in the discussion.

[@kingcosworth2643]

I love how what at one point is the damaging of an ancient piece of artwork, the action itself slowly becomes a priceless piece of human archaeology. Egypt is similar with graffiti, the same as Rome with ancient graffiti.

[@FrauWNiemand]

Even though his spoon microphone has changed a lot, I really like the heartwarming real interest in Archeology you can see in Stefans eyes, when he's talking about these topics.

[@jamesgrover2005]

Can you please post on Nebula at the same time 🙏 .. or earlier ;) Edit: damn you did.. note to self - look before you leap🙈

[@StefanMilo]

I did have a problem with my last video I thought I had scheduled it but I guess I didn't save it or something.

[@jamesgrover2005]

@@StefanMilo thanks for your hard work and great content Stefan😊

[@elizabethmcglothlin5406]

People still keep animal trophies.

[@sauryamishra]

About the site in northern Spain, the one with the box painting - the curves on the animals are so incredibly amazing, especially the one on the top. There's something very very artistic about those line, and to think it was made by Neanderthals is so amazing. But then yes it could be later humans as well. I hope they do the carbon dating soon, really want to know more about those painting.

[@agresticumbra]

I think part of the reason many layfolk respond to the word "ritual" the way they do is that is that it smacks of the pulpit. I think an easier to understand word would be "tradition", which may have a different meaning amongst outside of the pedestrian usage of the average individual. That said, the last Thanksgiving I had with my father, who died suddenly one month later, included something you spoke of. Flashback: my father was raised on the edge of the dust bowl in Oklahoma, during the Great Depression - spent that part of his childhood half starved, like many did at the time. So as you can imagine, nothing went to waste. My father's oldest sister came in for Thanksgiving, and together they cooked up a few squirrel that my father had killed. When they brought the squirrel out to the dinner table, their skulls lined the platter. The "delicacy" of the day for my father and aunt were the brains, as an ode to their childhood diet. I grew up with parents who ate organ meat, and my older brothers acquired a taste for some of it, but I never did.😝

[@progdrummer51]

Symbolic expression, ritual behavior, and material culture from Neanderthals?! It's almost like they're human. Perhaps next we will come to see evidence of Neanderthal Shamanism (or maybe we are already looking at it). I love to see all of the research investigating these possibilities. It challenges the idea of Homo sapiens as the exceptional species with culture.

[@ET3Roberts]

Anyone ever seen "Quest for Fire"? Cool movie, no words.

[@jakobraahauge7299]

one of my childhood favourites! Saw it like fifty times as big child

[@revolutionaryhamburger]

No words but constant nudity spiced with cannibal cults and cave men trapped by tigers in trees. A perfect film.

[@eurybaric]

Man, your videos ground me. In a good way, like out of anxiety. Cheers mate 💙

[@paulallison6418]

This cave was obviously a special place tribally for this group of Neanderthals, great video Stefan!

[@Narmatonia]

The start of the video show exactly why the backlash against 'ritual' is misplaced. It seems like people picture organised dogmatic religion whenever they hear it, but arguably any practice that isn't mainly utilitarian can be considered ritual. Maybe there needs to be a new phrase similar to the use of UAP instead of UFO

[@bruce-le-smith]

agreed that's the issue, the terms "ritual" and "cult" acquired a lot of baggage before the 21st century, and their unqualified use can cause concerns that the presenter may be using outdated theories uncritically. as soon as you swap in "symbolic" for ritual it starts sounding a lot less like Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough

[@user-xg7bz1wy1v]

Another Gneiss video Stefan 👍

[@linnadhiel2760]

I read a book recently called Smart Neanderthal and it discusses the very distinct possibility that Neanderthals were hunting specific birds (usually black feathered) and butchery markings indicated that they were processing the wings. There was a brief discussion at the end that really sticks with me is this idea of why do we assume h.s taught neanderthals certain behaviours? Why couldn't they have taught US behaviours? I'm always of the opinion that our human family but esp Neanderthals deserve so much better treatment than is often given to them, but this book treated them in such a wonderful way. I would definitely recommend the book, its written in a way that leans more away from the dry tone of a lot of academic based books. The audiobook is available on the audible plus catalogue for anyone who has it.

[@johannmartinez4300]

Great content, thank you for tour work! I believe it is “cueva descubierta” as in uncovered

[@longline]

Helicopter Bird Pirate... That's a tshirt. Please merch. It's a classic hook for merch.

[@margeryk000]

Well done!

[@stephanieparker1250]

Really great video, lots to consider and think about. Thanks! I love hearing about mysteries we are still working out and getting your view point on it.

[@conroc01]

Stefan you would be excellent host of a nature series a la the BBC or Nature. Your content is at that level. Keep up the excellent work!

[@talalahmedvlogs5717]

Stefann!!!

[@pectenmaximus231]

The most metal video title to date

[@StefanMilo]

deffo a good band name

[@pectenmaximus231]

@@StefanMiloMy thoughts exactly

[@deric999]

Great video! Love how you keep up with the leading edge of everything new.