Ancient Humans Used Cave in Spain as Burial Spot for 4 Millennia

Around seven thousand years ago, ancient humans in northeastern Spain put their deceased deep within a cave. This created a large burial ground that lasted about four thousand years.

Now, archaeologists say they’ve found over seven thousand bones there. Some clues even hint that people might have actually been making use of the grounds tens of thousands of years ago.

The cave is called Cova dels Xaragalls, meaning Cave of the Ravines. Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo, an archaeologist from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) and the Merida Institute of Archaeology, mentioned in an email to Live Science that it functioned like a huge cemetery where many people were buried together.

Shared human graves from the late Neolithic period

Rodríguez-Hidalgo explained that people began burying their loved ones in shared graves within the cave roughly seven thousand years ago during the late Neolithic or New Stone Age.

This tradition continued through most of the Chalcolithic (“Copper-Stone”) period and all the way into the Bronze Age, which concluded in Spain about three thousand years ago.

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Researchers discovered that when they analyzed the items buried with the dead, including such objects as ceramics, flint tools, and necklaces, they noticed a pattern. During the late Chalcolithic and Bronze Age, important people were buried separately in the cave. However, those not a part of high society were still buried together in communal graves inside the cave.

During the Bronze Age, there were commonly lots of items buried with the dead. Some people were laid to rest with many weapons and other valuable items, according to Rodríguez-Hidalgo.

Bronze Age skull with a hole in the cranium

In one of the Bronze Age skulls found, there’s a hole in the skull, which seems to have been created through a procedure called trepanation. This person seemed to have suffered from various illnesses, and it’s possible that this hole was an attempt to cure them, Rodríguez-Hidalgo explained.

However, it’s evident that the person didn’t survive the procedure because there’s no regrowth of bone in the hole, Rodríguez-Hidalgo noted.

This skull is the only one found in Cova dels Xaragalls with evidence of trepanation. However, in other prehistoric skulls from Spain, more than a hundred scars due to trepanation have been discovered, Rodríguez-Hidalgo added.

Apart from serving as a burial site from the Neolithic era to the Bronze Age, which covers about four thousand years, recent excavations uncovered more clues. Bones of wild goats and charcoal were found in a section of the cave, dating back to over forty-five thousand years ago.

During this time, Neanderthals lived in the area. Paleoanthropologists believe that anatomically, modern humans began replacing Neanderthals across Europe around forty thousand years ago. However, modern genetics indicates there were instances of interbreeding between the two groups.