The châtelperronian Neandertals of Cova Foradada (Calafell, Spain) used Iberian imperial eagle phalanges for symbolic purposes
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Anthropology, Evolutionary Studies, Paleontology, Zoology
- Keywords
- Personal Ornaments, Pleistocene, Quaternary, Talon, Taphonomy, Prehistory, Raptor, Paleoanthropology, Cut Marks
- Copyright
- © 2018 Rodríguez-Hidalgo et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. The châtelperronian Neandertals of Cova Foradada (Calafell, Spain) used Iberian imperial eagle phalanges for symbolic purposes. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27133v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27133v1
Abstract
The use of personal ornaments by Neandertals is one of the scarce evidence of their symbolic behaviour. Among them stand up the eagle talons used presumably as pendants, in an analogous way than anatomically Modern Humans (Homo sapiens) did. Considering the broad range and time scale of Neandertals distribution across Eurasia, this phenomenon seems to be concentrated in a very specific area of Southwestern-Mediterranean Europe during a span of ca. 80 ka. Here we present the analysis of one pedal phalange of a large eagle recovered in Foradada cave site, Spain. Our research confirms the use of eagle talons as symbolic elements in Iberia, expanding geographically and temporally one of the most common evidence of symbolic behaviour among western European Neandertals. The convergence in use of large raptor talons as symbolic elements by one of the last Neandertal populations raises the survival of some cultural elements of the Middle Paleolithic into beginnings of the Upper Paleolithic.
Author Comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints that will be presented in NeanderART 2018 – International Conference will be held in Turin, Italy, from August, 22 to August 26, 2018. It has not been submitted to peer review.
Supplemental Information
Neandertal sites and layers with cut-marked raptor phalanges interpreted as symbolic elements
CP: Châtelperronian; CM: Classic Mousterian; L: Levallois; MP: Middle Paleolithic; M: Mousterian; MTA: Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition; N: Neronian; N/A: Not applicable/ Unknown.*The case of Baume de Gigny correspond to a swan