Did Neanderthals teach us tool skills?

• Autores: Colin Barras
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2930, 2013, pág. 11
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • A team of archaeologists has found evidence to suggest that Neanderthals were the first to produce a type of specialized bone tool that is still used in some cultures today. The find is the best evidence yet that humans may have--on rare occasions--learned a trick or two from their extinct cousins. Shannon McPherron at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and Marie Soressi at Leiden University in the Netherlands, with colleagues, have just finished excavating two sites in south-west France that are 45,000 and 51,000 years old--before human species is thought to have arrived in Europe. At both sites, the team found lissoirs--specialized tools made of polished bone. Some people process animal hides and make leather using similar tools today. Unless humans came to Europe earlier, the bone tools could have been fashioned only by Neanderthals, says McPherron.