A new study suggests that before becoming extinct about 30,000 years ago, Neanderthals may have created a tool-making technique that influenced humans in Europe later on.
Archeologists have exposed supporting facts that Neanderthals were crafting specialized tools made out of bone before humans arrived in Europe.
However, that is one of the many possible scenarios. One more is the arrival of modern humans earlier than what is thought of and influenced the tool-making of Neanderthals. To find out more about these things, archeologist will have to continuously dig to collect more evidences.
The relics, which are roughly 50,000 years old, were dug from two spot in France.
Pech-de-l'Aze, a classic Neanderthal cave site, is one of the sites. A part of the tip of a bone tool, a few centimeters long was discovered there. It is a part of a bone tool because of how rounded and polished the tip is, as believed by the scientists.
Abri Peyrony is the other site. It is situated at about 35 kilometers away in a superficial valley up against a low cliff base. Archeologists have dug up a complete tool specimen and two more relics like the one in the Pech-de-l'Aze.
Neanderthals can make a bone tool that is something not new to scientists, but recent discoveries appears to be their stone tools.
The newly discovered tool specimens are very similar to a lissoir, a leather smoother, which means “to make smooth.” It seems to be crafted from the rib of a medium-sized animal that may probably be a red deer.
In an e-mail sent to CNN by Ron Pinhasi, a researcher at the University College Dublin, he stated that this research is a significant and fascinating study. Though, he noted that “this does not suggest that Neanderthals had the same cognitive capacities as modern humans.”
These new findings can be read in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
