At www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israeli-led-study-busts-myths-about-the-lives-… … Israeli archaeologists have been excavating a site that disproves the idea Neanderthals lives in caves is the headline, a piece of journalistic license it would seem. The site currently being investigated is far from being a cave – see image below, an aerial view of an excavation in open country ….
… the study itself was published in Scientific Reports and documents a vibrant population that lived in an open landscape 60,000 years ago. They appear to have frequently turned up at the same place. This is said to contradict previous claims that modern humans were living in the same general area 65,000 years ago. Clearly, limited skeletal material has led to hypothesis that may not be strictly true as a few bones leads to conjecture. The problem is that bones are rarely preserved in soil.
The same story is at www.antiquities.org.il/Article_eng.aspx?sec_id=25&subj_id=240&id=4290 … when again it refers to Neanderthals as cavemen 'in folklore' – but is that still a valid tag to label with them. Cave sediments have proved useful in the search for early humans, including Neanderthals, but does that mean they lived predominantly in caves rather than outside in the elements (in rudimentary structures).
