Krapina and the case for Neandertal symbolic behavior

• David W. Frayer ^[1] ; Jakov Radovčić ; Davorka Radovčić ^[2]
  1. [1] University of Kansas

     University of Kansas

     City of Lawrence, Estados Unidos

     
  2. [2] Croatian Natural History Museum
• Localización: Current anthropology: A world journal of the sciences of man, ISSN 0011-3204, Nº. 6, 2020, págs. 713-731
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen

  • We review four examples of ritual or symbolic behavior from the central European Mousterian site of Krapina in present-day Croatia. These include evidence of ritual cannibalism and secondary burials; a cranium of a Neandertal female with 35 mostly parallel postmortem lines inscribed into the forehead; eight talons and an associated foot bone from three or four different whitetailed eagles, all with signs of manipulation and assembly into a necklace, bracelet, or rattle; and a limestone rock with black inclusions that appears to have been carried onto the site as a curiosity. These occur well before any modern Homo sapiens entered Europe and are evidence that the Krapina Neandertals had ritual and symbolic capacities. Along with Krapina, there is mounting evidence from other earlier and later Neandertal sites of behaviors generally exclusively attributed to modern H. sapiens.