why did the neanderthals lives in caves.
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Neanderthals used many of the flakes — termed "débitage" in French — that they removed from cores as tools. Some flakes were used without further modification, while others were shaped into various types of retouched tools. Many of the Middle Paleolithic assemblages of cores, flakes, and retouched tools are referred to as Mousterian, the name given to this type of archaeological culture in the late 19th century, from the type site of Le Moustier (France). François Bordes' typology (Bordes 1961a) of Middle Paleolithic flake tools divides them into scrapers (Figure 2), points, denticulates, backed knives, bifaces, and miscellaneous other types. On the basis of the relative frequencies of tool types such as scrapers versus denticulates, as well as the frequency of Levallois flakes and bifaces, Bordes devised a classification of assemblages into different Mousterian facies (Bordes 1953a, 1961b). According to Bordes, these facies were the product of different culture groups (Bordes & de Sonneville-Bordes 1970). Others disagreed, suggesting that the facies represented diachronic patterning (Mellars 1965, 1969), different activities (Binford & Binford 1966), scraper reduction (Dibble 1984, 1995), or intensity of raw material use and climate (Rolland & Dibble 1990). This controversy has been called "The Great Mousterian Debate." Each of these interpretations has furthered our understanding of the meaning of the variability in retouched tool types in the Middle Paleolithic. Unfortunately, a more complete understanding of what these different tool types represent is hampered by a relative lack of information regarding what these tools were used for.
While identifying specifics about tool use has proven difficult, we have begun to learn how Neanderthals used their landscapes by studying patterns of faunal exploitation and raw material transport. Evidence shows that, in western Europe, most raw materials used for stone tools are local and come from sources within 5 km of each site. This suggests that Neanderthals circulated within relatively small territories. In central Europe, however, raw materials traveled further, indicating more wide-ranging mobility patterns (Feblot-Augustins 1993) or a more limited availability of high-quality raw material sources (Mellars 1996). Studies of faunal exploitation and the curation of raw materials from sites throughout Europe have shown that Neanderthals were able to plan subsistence strategies and adapt their tool-making behavior to these subsistence strategies, revealing behavioral flexibility and problem-solving abilities (Kuhn 1995, Burke 2006).