Discover reports: Circular structures discovered in a French cave continue to build the case that Neanderthals were more intelligent than we give them credit for.

Deep inside the Bruniquel Cave, researchers discovered two rings of stalactites and stalagmites that appeared to have been deliberately stacked and arranged to form a structure. The site also contained charred animal bones, which may have served as torches to illuminate the dark depths of the cave or keep bears at bay. The thing is, a new dating analysis suggests these structures were built more than 170,000 years ago, long before Homo sapiens arrived in the area. That means Neanderthals were the likely architects, and we didn’t expect them to be such adept builders and cave explorers.

The structures in Bruniquel were first discovered in 1990 and dated at the time to roughly 50,000 years ago based on carbon dating techniques. However, in 2013, Sophie Verheyden of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences conducted a new study, drilling into the stalactites and stalagmites to measure differences between layers of rock that accumulated before and after they were felled. Her analysis, published Wednesday in Nature, revealed an astounding age of roughly 176,500 years, more than three times the previous estimate. By contrast, the oldest known human cave art is only around 42,000 years old. [Continue reading…]