MORE EVIDENCE of Culture
While the dating is not yet sure, the material that we get from caves in Europe must go back to about 100,000 years ago; the time of the classic Neanderthal group followed soon afterwards. We don’t know why there is no earlier material in the caves; apparently they were not used before the last interglacial phase (the period just before the last great glaciation). We know that men of the classic Neanderthal group were living in caves from about 75,000 to 45,000 years ago. New radioactive carbon dates even suggest that some of the traces of culture we’ll describe in this chapter may have lasted to about 35,000 years ago. Probably some of the pre-neanderthaloid types of men had also lived in caves. But we have so far found their bones in caves only in Palestine and at Fontéchevade.