Bruniquel Cave

Bruniquel Cave is an archeological site near Bruniquel, in an area which has many paleolithic sites, east of Montauban in southwestern France. Annular (ring) and accumulation (pile) structures made of broken stalagmites have been found 336 metres from the cave entrance. Traces of fire were also found. The constructions have been dated to approximately 176,000 years ago. In a letter to Nature reporting the discovery in 2016, Jacques Jaubert and his co-authors state the structures are of anthropogenic origin, and as early Neanderthals were the only humans in the area at that time, they must have been the builders, a conclusion that is accepted by Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. The discovery demonstrates early Neanderthals were capable of building more elaborate structures than previously realised, and had a more complex social organisation than previously thought. The modern human Aurignacian culture, more than 100,000 years later, is not known to have produced constructions in caves.