Though Neanderthals were never actually humans, they displayed many characteristics and behaviors common to modern-day man. Many heated debates exist in archeology over to what extent Neanderthals share commonalities to humans, but thanks to a team of researchers, one of the biggest controversies may finally be put to rest. According to their 13-year study, Neanderthals did bury their dead.

The study took place in southwestern France, where the findings of the burial were first discovered in La Chappel-aux Saints in 1908. The research team believes the discovery supports the idea that the burials took place before modern humans arrived in Western Europe.

At the time of the discovery, early 20^th-century archeologists posed the idea that the site was a burial ground, and that it appeared to be created by a predecessor to homo sapiens. Their conclusions became the source of a century’s worth of heated arguments. Skeptics concluded the discovery was a mistake and that the Neanderthal burial was most likely unintentional.

“This discovery not only confirms the existence of Neanderthal burials in Western Europe, but also reveals a relatively sophisticated cognitive capacity to produce them,” says William Rendu, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CIRHUS) in New York City. The effort was a collaborative arrangement between France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and New York University.

Rendu was one of the believers early on, and in 1999 he and some collaborators began excavating seven nearby caves. During their excavation, the scientists discovered the remains of a Neanderthal adult and two children, along with bison and reindeer bones. The team did not find tools near the site, which would indicate digging; however, the geological analysis of the depression the bodies were found in suggest that the indents were not natural features of the cave floor.

The team also re-examined the 1908 human remains, which, by contrast to the newly discovered remains, had no weather-related smoothing or signs of disturbance by animals. The team concluded their research in 2012.

“The relatively pristine nature of these 50,000-year-old remains implies that they were covered soon after death, strongly supporting our conclusion that Neanderthals in this part of Europe took steps to bury their dead,” says Rendu.

“While we cannot know if this practice was part of a ritual or merely pragmatic, the discovery reduces the behavioral distance between them and us.”