We are not going to tell you about the Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets or the weird events that take place there. It is a secret chamber that dates back many, many years to the time of Neanderthals. This hominid, similar in many ways to Homo Sapiens, lived in the Middle Paleolithic, between 200,000 and 40,000 years ago.
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image credit: evolution soup twitter
Neanderthals have always fascinated researchers, who have discovered a number of their remains throughout history. A recent discovery, however, could reveal new information about their shelters. Vanguard Cave, one of the four caves that make up the Gorham Cave Complex – in Gibraltar – is a true chamber of secrets, and specialists believe the last humans to live in the Middle Paleolithic were hiding there. The Vanguard Cave is a natural sea cave that was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016. The cave is 35 meters high and contains a large number of deposits, which have been studied by archaeologists who began to excavate the cave. site. Activities started in 2012, and they started looking for underground passages or chambers that might have been covered with sand over time. This is how the “chamber of secrets” was discovered.
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image credit: Gipmetal77 wikipedia
Professor Clive Finlayson and his team found a small space in the floor and a small hole – a small passage that led them to this room filled with animal remains. They tried to find out why the animals were there, whether they had gone there on their own or whether someone had brought them there. Some clues led them to believe that the Neanderthals had brought the animals into it.
In other caves in the complex, Neanderthal hearths and tools have been discovered in the past, showing that they used them as a refuge, but so far no other remains have been found: this is why the discovery of a hitherto unknown secret chamber is so exciting for researchers. However, no remains of the body were found in the caves, which leaves researchers perplexed. One plausible explanation is that the bodies of the dead were transported elsewhere, outside of the cave, which our ancestors would have considered their home.
source used: sciencetimes