We like to think of ourselves as special. We’re Homo sapiens, after all. But a new study of Ice Age Europe has found that our supposedly unique bone tools, a sign of higher intelligence, weren’t so unique after all. Neanderthals fashioned and used hundreds of the same tools while butchering animals and preparing hides, according to a new paper.
Evidence for this has arisen, in recent years, from two Neanderthal sites of some note – starting with the Chagyrskaya Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia. Here, researchers found about 1,200 bone tools, including a large number of “retouchers,” which act as light hammers for cutting and shaping stone tools.
The scientists envisioned that, some 60,000 years to 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals hauled dead bison to the cave through cold weather for processing. Like early H. sapiens, they used animals as sources for both food and raw materials. And it sure looked like they manufactured bone tools. But was Chagyrskaya an isolated pocket of innovation or part of something wider?
