Dederiyeh
Coordinates: 36 ° 24 ′ 0 ″ N , 36 ° 52 ′ 0 ″ E
Dederiyeh is the name commonly used in prehistoric archeology for a Middle Paleolithic site near the Afrintal in Syria , which is 60 m above Wadi Dederiyeh . The name is Kurdish and means roughly 'two entrances'. The site is a cave in the north-west of the country, the Dederiyeh cave, which contained the remains of at least 17 Neanderthal individuals. On the basis of one of the children's skeletons discovered there, it was possible to prove that Neanderthal children had a similarly long childhood as today's children, while until then it was assumed that their duration was closer to that of primates .
Discovery, dating
The cave was discovered in 1987 and has been excavated ever since; its entrance is 15 m wide and 8 m high, while the cave is 60 m deep and up to 40 m wide. A kind of wide chimney in the rear part of the cave provided the early residents with sufficient daylight. A total of 15 layers with a total height of 3 m could be distinguished. These could be divided into four main groups, whereby all four units could be correlated with layer B of the Israeli site of Tabun . These were assigned to the Levantine Moustérien . Fireplaces were found in layers 11, 6 and 3.
Human remains, burial place
The site became famous through the discovery of the first almost complete skeletons of Neanderthals in the northern Levant . On August 23, 1993, a team of archaeologists led by Takeru Akazawa discovered a first child's skeleton in layer 11 of the said cave, which was dated to over 50,000 years ago. It consisted of about 200 bones. The site of the discovery was a round pit 2.5 m in diameter and 1.5 m deep with a level bottom. In addition to the skeleton, there were large numbers of heavily abraded and broken flintstones with Middle Paleolithic characteristics, as well as ceramics from the 7th and 6th centuries BC. A repeated use as a fireplace can be proven for the time about 2000 years ago in the top layer.
During the excavation campaign in 1997 and 1998, a second child's skeleton was discovered in layer 3 in the north section, which was named Dederiyeh 2 . Both children showed signs of a ritual burial. Here was Dederiyeh 1 , as the first children's skeleton was called very intact. In 2000, skeletal parts of 15 other individuals were exposed.
Dederiyeh 2 , the second child's skeleton, was also surrounded by flint stones and bone fragments. However, the child's remains were less well preserved; also, the pit was only 70 by 50 cm, and it was only 25 cm deep. It was at the bottom of layer 3. The pit contained 14 flint tools typical of the Moustérien , plus over 100 pieces of debris from cuttings and a number of animal bones, including a large fragment of tortoise shell . The place was interpreted as a burial place, which however was disturbed. So the bones were no longer in their original place. But they could all be assigned to an individual, because they all belonged to the same developmental phase and no bones were duplicated. The scattering of the bones can probably be explained by the action of water and the activity of animals.
The discoverers did not rely on traditional morphological analysis and classification for Dederiyeh 1 . So one tried to examine the cutting traces and to reconstruct the skeleton, movement and growth sequences of the child. This project, known as The Neanderthal Resuscitation Project , succeeded in restoring the skeleton as much as possible and securing the fragile bones. The child was found to be about 80 cm tall. The age could be determined on the basis of the milk teeth at about two years, but at that time the sexual characteristics on the skeleton were not yet developed in such a way that one could decide whether it was a girl or a boy. Compared to today's children, the head was larger, as were the overall bones. While the nasal bone is very large, the chin barely protrudes, the pubic bone - the pelvis has not yet grown together, so the ilium , pubic bone and ischium are still separated - is relatively large. What is missing are the bones of the face. However, this could be reconstructed on the basis of the facial bones of Dederiyeh 2 , which comes from a child who is also two years old. On this basis, a complete model of the Neanderthal child could be developed, and the movement sequences could be reconstructed.
Animal remains, hunting prey
Over 70% of the animal bones found came from goats and sheep . The wild forms Capra aegagrus and Ovis ammon were represented , which even made up over 80% of the bones in layer 11. In layer 3, on the other hand, their share decreased by about half, while Cervus elaphus (red deer), Dama mesopotamica , wild boar and Bos primigenius were now strongly represented. These animal species preferred a more humid and temperate climate. In line with this climate, there were forests in the valley, to which evidence of hackberry trees and many campfire sites in layer 3 match.
A total of four phases can be distinguished. From strata 15 to 12, ungulates inhabiting very dry areas dominate, which continues in strata 11 to 7 (the proportion of wild goats and the like is around 80%), but the proportion of steppe dwellers and the more moderate zones increases. In layers 6 to 3 the proportion of animals in temperate zones increases sharply, so that Cervidae make up about 30% of the animals. Aurochs appear. In layers 1 and 2, forest dwellers finally predominate. It can therefore be determined that the climate changed in four stages, namely from a very dry steppe, in which wild goats were mainly hunted, then gazelles appeared in an already less dry environment. These dry phases were followed by two more humid ones with red deer and fallow deer, and finally a wet phase with forest dwellers such as wild boar.
The small number of carnivore bones, namely only 0.3% of the population, indicates that the animals were introduced by humans. In this direction, the fact that only a single bone, that of an aurochs, has gnawing marks, and that, on the other hand, numerous bones have cut marks and those from blows. Only 20.9% of the bones show traces of fire. In addition, the traces and the composition of the hunted prey show that the inhabitants hunted, but possibly did not spurn carrion. This is indicated by the presence of rhinoceros and Aucherox bones. Christophe Griggo assumed that the Neanderthals accepted carrion only in very large animals.
literature
- Osamu Kondo, Hajime Ishida, Tsunehiko Hanihara, Tetsuaki Wakebe, Yukio Dodo, Takeru Akazawa: Cranial Ontogeny in Neandertal Children: Evidence from neurocranium, Facebook, and Mandible in Elzbieta Zadzinska (ed.): Current Trends in Dental Morphology Research , University of Lodz Press, Łódź 2005, pp. 243-255. ( online , PDF)
- Osamu Kondo, Hajime Ishida: Ontogenetic variation in the Dederiyeh Neandertal infants: Postcranial evidence , in: Jennifer L. Thompson, Gail E. Krovitz, Andrew J. Nelson (eds.): Patterns of Growth and Development in the Genus Homo , Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 386-411.
- Tateru Akazawa, Sultan Muhesen (ed.): Neanderthal Burials: Excavations of the Dederiyeh Cave (Afrin Syria) , Auckland 2003.
- Shoji Ohta, Yoshihiro A. Nishiaki, Yoshito Abe, Yuji Mizoguchi, Osamu Kondo, Yukio Dodo, Sultan Muhesen, Takeru Akazawa, Takashi Oguchi, Jamal Haydal: Neanderthal infant burial from the Dederiyeh cave in Syria , in: Paléorient 21,2 (1995 ) 77-86. ( online )
Web links
- Welcome to the Dederiyeh Neanderthal.
- Photograph of the skeleton in situ
- Dederiyeh Cave and Excavations
- Dederiyeh 1 , Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Remarks
- ^ Bernard Wood: Wiley-Blackwell Student Dictionary of Human Evolution , John Wiley & Sons, 2015, p. 88.
- ↑ Osamu Kondo, Hajime Ishida: Ontogenetic variation in the Dederiyeh Neandertal infants: Postcranial evidence , in: Jennifer L. Thompson, Gail E. Krovitz, Andrew J. Nelson (eds.): Patterns of Growth and Development in the Genus Homo , Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 386-411, here: p. 387.
- ↑ They are redrawn here .
- ↑ Hajime Ishida, Osamu Kondo: The skull of the Neanderthal child of burial No.2 , in: Takeru Akazawa, Sultan Muhesen (ed.): Neanderthal Burials. Excavations of the Dederiyeh Cave, Afrin, Syria , L'erma di Bretschneider, Rome 2003, pp. 271-297.
- ↑ Ker Than: Neanderthal Burials Confirmed as Ancient Ritual , in: National Geographic, December 2013.
- ↑ Figure .
- ^ Stratigraphy and Faunal Remains .
- ↑ Christophe Griggo: Mousterian fauna from Dederiyeh Cave and comparisons with Fauna from Umm El Tlel and Douara Cave , in: Paléorient 30,1 (2004) 149–162, here: p. 151 f.
- ↑ Christophe Griggo: Mousterian fauna from Dederiyeh Cave and comparisons with Fauna from Umm El Tlel and Douara Cave , in: Paléorient 30,1 (2004) 149–162, here: p. 155.
- ↑ Christophe Griggo: Mousterian fauna from Dederiyeh Cave and comparisons with Fauna from Umm El Tlel and Douara Cave , in: Paléorient 30,1 (2004) 149–162, here: p. 156.