Neanderthal Doors–What Were They Like?

When I launched my latest book, Badlands, efriend and blogger, Dan Antion, hosted me over at his amazing blog, No Facilities. Dan lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania one of my former hometowns, and sets many/all of his books in that storied city where the mighty Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela Rivers meet. It’s fun to read his stories, tied to geography and history I remember from way-back-when.

Dan is also the author of an array of books I’ve enjoyed reading, including:

The Dreamer’s Alliance 5-book series

Bridge to Nowhere

…all available on Kindle and KU.

His blog is home to a fun blog hop called Thursday Doors where participants discuss outstanding doors they have seen. Surprisingly, doors are as varied as fingerprints. I never tire of seeing what folks come up with. 

As a tie-in to my book Badlands and Dan’s passion, I sent him an article about Neanderthal doors. If you missed it back then, here’s a reprint:

Thursday Doors: What if there aren’t any?

My latest prehistoric trilogy, Savage Land, stars Neanderthals. They lived in a time when man was just learning about sewing, cooking, how to turn natural resources like bark and sap into usable materials like glue by cooking it. By all accounts, they understood how to adapt their surroundings to serve their needs and were eager to test it out.

One in particular is a topic of Dan’s Thursday Door’s blog hop: Did Neanderthals have doors on their homes and if so, what were they like?

First, Neanderthals were nomads. They lived in areas for short periods, hunted and gathered food until resources became scarce and then moved on. They didn’t build houses–that didn’t come until much later in man’s cultural evolution–but they did establish domiciles that served their needs for periods of time until them moved on. Neanderthals were strong, smart predators wherever they went, the apex predators in their environment with the exception of Homo sapiens when they arrived toward the end of the Neanderthal existence. They were few in number–about 100,000 in all–so didn’t worry about invasions from their own kind, but were smart enough to be cautious, careful, and prepare for the unexpected.

That’s where doors came in.

Doors were not so much a barrier that was opened or closed as protection against entry by predators who didn’t understand they didn’t belong there. Here are some examples:

• • Neanderthals are famous for living in cave. Often, a bramble bush blocked entrance from cat or canis species who previously lived there, other Uprights who might want to settle there, or any uninvited intruder.

 

• • The cave mouth couth be covered with skins to block the wind, snow, or rain, allowing the thick rock walls and the interior fire pit to warm the cavern and keep the occupants cozy

• • When Neanderthals sheltered outdoors, they might pound tree limbs into the ground or embed stalagmites collected from a cave’s interior, tusks, or long bones in a circle and then spread the hides of large animals between them to block the weather.

 

• • In the absence of other materials, Neanderthals could place the fire pit in the mouth to deter entrance and also, vent smoke from the flames to the outside.

 

 

• • Because the mouth of many caves were small, a chosen sentry who stayed awake during the night could prevent unexpected entries, a sort of “human door”.

 

 

Since Neanderthals lived from approximately 450,000 years ago to 45,000 years ago, a time without books, pottery, weapons, and many other artifacts that could provide proof of what really happened either didn’t exist or wasn’t preserved over time, much extrapolation is made from rocks, stone tools, and educated guesses.  These suggestions for doors are grounded in what we know about Neanderthal behavior and capabilities, that they were clever, possessed the human drive to unravel problems and the capacity to solve even new ones. 

 

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Man vs. Nature saga, the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers, and the acclaimed Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, blog webmaster, an Amazon Vine Voice, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Balance of Nature Winter 2026