MADE BY NEANDERTHALS: 50 THOUSAND YEAR OLD BONE TOOLS

Two research teams from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands have jointly reported the discovery of Neanderthal bone tools coming from their excavations at two neighbouring Palaeolithic sites in south west France.


The tools are unlike any others previously found in Neanderthal sites, but they are similar to a tool type well known from later modern human sites and still in use today by high-end leather workers. This tool, called a lissoir or smoother, is shaped from deer ribs and has a polished tip that, when pushed against a hide, creates softer, burnished and more water resistant leather. The bone tool is still used today by leather workers some 50 thousand years after the Neanderthals and the first anatomically modern humans in Europe.
 

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