About 37,000 years ago, Neanderthals clustered in small groups in what is now southern Spain. Their lives may have been transformed by the eruption of the Phlegraean Fields in Italy a few thousand years earlier, when the caldera's massive explosion disrupted food chains across the Mediterranean region.
They may have gone about their daily life: Crafting stone tools, eating birds and mushrooms, engraving symbols on rocks, and creating jewelry out of feathers and shells.
