In a quarry in Swindon, now southwest England, researchers have unearthed a large tomb containing the remains of five people who died during the last ice age – a baby, two young children and two adults.
According to the BBC, Researchers at DigAdventures discovered stone tools designed by Neanderthals that included small stone tools known as hand axes and scrapers, which were used to clean the skins of new animals, along with the remains of mammoths. However, the team has not yet examined the mammoth bones to see if there are marks from these tools.
Lisa Westcott Wilkins, co-founder of Digventures, said in a statement that “finding mammoth bones is always unusual.” “Very old and well preserved and found near Neanderthal stone tools are exceptional.”
Sally and Neville Hollingworth, two amateur fossil hunters, discovered the tomb and tools by Neanderthal. Diveventures soon arranged to drill two field stations in 2019 and 2020. Numerous winter monuments have been found, including the wings of tiny beetles, freshwater snail shells, mammoths, leg bones, ribs and spines. Its descendants include the woolly mammoth.
The remains are 220,000 to 210,000 years old, and by the end of a glacial or warmer period, Neanderthals still roamed the British Isles. Neanderthals, on the other hand, moved south as temperatures dropped.
The team plans to investigate why so many mammoths died in this area and whether Neanderthals hunted them. According to some prehistoric evidence previously discovered, Neanderthals may have chased mammoths and other large pucciderms.
In a statement, Duncan Wilson, chief executive of the British Organization for the Preservation of Historic History in the United Kingdom, said: “The discoveries in the UK are of immense value in understanding the human occupation, and the sophisticated environmental evidence that has been recovered will help us to understand it in the context of past climate change. We look forward to shedding more light on life previously lived in the UK.
