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DENVER, COLORADO—The excavation of Neanderthal living spaces at Riparo Bombrini, a collapsed rock shelter in northwestern Italy, shows that they divided the cave into different areas for different activities, such as butchering game and tool making. A well-placed hearth would have kept the cave warm. “There has been this idea that Neanderthals did not have an organized use of space, something that has always been attributed to humans. But we found that Neanderthals did not just throw their stuff everywhere but in fact were organized and purposeful when it came to domestic space,” said Julien Riel-Salvatore of the University of Colorado, Denver.
