It is no secret since some of the species that preceded the Homo sapiens They were able to not only use tools but also capable of molding and manufacturing them. And this not only refers to our “close relatives” of the genre Homolike Neanderthals or H. erectus: Millions of years ago that our ancestors already carved stones in their African habitat.
A Neanderthal tool. However, it has not been until now that we have realized that a spearhead made with bone, the oldest found in Europe, had been manufactured by a group of Neanderthals. The dating has placed its manufacture at a point between 80,000 and 70,000 years ago, before the arrival of our species to the continent.
Although we knew that Neanderthals (like other previous species) were able to manufacture and use tools, to date we used to consider that Neanderthals only used stones as the main element of their utensils. The use of bones as a raw material was created a subsequent “invention”, of the sapiens.
2003. The protagonist of this story is a bone spearhead found in 2003 in the Russian cave of Mezmaiskaya, located in the northern Caucasus. The bone could have belonged to an animal of considerable size, such as a bison.
Before arrival. The study of this artifact led the team responsible for the new study to conclude that European Neanderthals managed to independently develop this “technology”, before coming into contact with our species during the upper Paleolithic. Of course, the team indicates that the use of bone tip weapons was at a “nascent level” if compared to those introduced in Eurasia by the Homo sapiens.
Bituminous residue. In addition to the bone, the team also paid attention to the adhesive used to join the tip to the body of the spear. Through various methodologies, including infrared and spectroscopy microscopy, the team studied the bituminous residue of what would have been the adherent used in the weapon and determined that it would have been linked to a body made of wood.
The details of the study were published in an article in the magazine Journal of Archaeological Science.
A key transition. Although the idea that Neanderthals were a species that in a matter of reasoning had little to envy ours, the notion that they always went “a rebufo” of the sapiens is difficult to eliminate. Although the arrival of modern humans meant important changes in prehistoric Europe, it is difficult to determine in what instances it was a transfer of knowledge and techniques and in what instances the Neanderthals were able to develop certain technologies.
An example of this we have in the glue. Today we know that Neanderthals were able to develop compound glue that they used in their tools instead of simple glue (such as bituminous).
This is not limited to the case of Neanderthals. A recent study conducted in one of the oldest known African deposits, that of Olduvai, showed evidence of the use of bone tools more than one million years ago in time, before even the appearance of the first Homo sapiens.
In WorldOfSoftware | If the question is “when the Neanderthals and the Sapiens were crossed,” we now have the answer: about 47,000 years ago
Image | Zurab Dip
