The latest science, an essential piece to know the past of neanderthals

The fragility of the surface makes it necessary to work with great precision. | Xavi Tyrol

During all these years of excavations at the prehistoric site of Salt, they were applied Various searches for the sole purpose of learning about the past of Neanderthals, which includes both the behavior and lives of these people.

According to one of the excavation coordinators, Christ HernandezThe good state of preservation of this site “allows for the application of an increasingly precise and more advanced methodology, and therefore very accurate data” on Neanderthals. “Salt has updated the way it works,” and that “might be so One of the European sites where molecular archeology is applied, i.e. a multi-analytical, interdisciplinary archaeology that allows the exploitation of information contained in sediments through the study of archaeological chemical, mineral or magnetic materials.”

In this sense, one of the researchers who is currently excavating in Salt, Angela Herragon, details that the archaeological magnetism, in the case of the found flames, “is based on The remaining record of the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field at the time of its creation, when it burns and cools down.

Temporary difference between stoves
Thus, because the aforementioned Earth’s magnetic field changes over time, this process “serves to identify desynchronizations”. To do this, the directions of the Earth’s magnetic field” from different fires and . are compared If we see that they are different, we can know that the flames were made at separate times in time”.

On the other hand, based on this potential time difference between the flames found at the site during the excavations, the researchers apply “a series of Statistical methods and ancient magnetic models (…) to be able to infer the minimum number of times that may have elapsed between some burns and others”, that is, to know how much time has elapsed between them all.

Herrejón explains that with these technologies, together, it is possible Order the fires in time, “Depending on the depth of how they are intertwined.”

The researcher asserts that “the complexity of the overlays is like this We can talk about hundreds of years or even thousands of years‘, of the difference between some fires and others, and highlights the difference that may exist between human behavior at one time, from his behavior at another time.