House of mammoth bones discovered

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

This photo shows the mammoth skeleton that primitive nomads used to build houses.

Researchers have discovered an elaborate 44,000-year-old Neanderthal house in Molodova, eastern Ukraine, made from mammoth bones, delicately decorated with carvings and pigments, British Dailymail reported.

It had been thought Neanderthals, which died out around 30,000 years ago, were primitive nomads who lived in caves simply for shelter.

The latest discovery is believed to be the earliest example of a domestic house built from bone and suggests our ancestors were more homey than previously thought.

Researchers from the Museum National d’Histories Naturelle in Paris said it suggests the early human ancestors settled in areas where they built structures to live for extended periods of time.

Laetitia Demay, an archaeologist who led the research, told The Telegraph: “This mammoth bone structure could be described as the basement of a wooden cover or as a windscreen. ‘The use of bones as building elements can be appreciated as anticipation of climatic variations. Under a cold climate in an open environment, the lack of wood led humans to use bones to build protections against the wind.’

The circular house was made up of 116 large bones including mammoth skulls, jaws, 14 tusks and leg bones. And inside at least 25 hearths filled with ash were also found, suggesting it had been used for some time.