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The implements are the oldest specialized bone tools found in Europe, said study lead author Marie Soressi, an archaeologist from Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Prior to the finds, tools unearthed at Neanderthal sites were almost exclusively made of stone, while bone tools were more common at early modern-human sites — leading many scholars to believe that Neanderthals adopted the technology from their more advanced relatives.
But the recently unearthed lissoirs, about 41,000 to 51,000 years old, could predate the arrival of modern humans in Europe and suggest that Neanderthals might have figured out how to make the tools independently, Soressi and her team wrote.
Radiocarbon dating dated one of the lissoirs to 51,000 years ago — thousands of years before modern humans landed in Europe. That suggests that our ancestors may have adopted the practice of making bone tools from the continent's earlier Neanderthal inhabitants.
Originally posted by schuyler
No one with any knowledge of the subject has EVER claimed that Neanderthal were stupid or "bird-brained." Indeed, the average size of a Neanderthal brain is bigger than that of Homo sapiens by a few CC.
Originally posted by arpgme
reply to post by schuyler
Originally posted by schuyler
No one with any knowledge of the subject has EVER claimed that Neanderthal were stupid or "bird-brained." Indeed, the average size of a Neanderthal brain is bigger than that of Homo sapiens by a few CC.
Bigger does not mean better. Functionality determines whether the brain is better or worse than another. I am not surprised that they used tools. Just because they were "older" humans that doesn't automatically mean that they were stupider.