Late Neanderthals used complex tool-making techniques

Phys dot org ^ | September 8, 2021 | Universitaet Tubingen

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Neanderthals living in the Swabian Jura more than 45,000 years ago used sophisticated techniques with many different production strategies to make stone tools. The Heidenschmiede site has yielded many stone tools and by-products of the toolmaking process.

The researchers refitted the pieces made from stone cores and were thereby able to show the techniques – requiring planning and forethought – used in the process...

The Heidenschmiede, a rock shelter near Heidenheim in southern Germany, was discovered and excavated in 1928 by amateur archaeologist Hermann Mohn, who recognized it as an important site for stone and bone worked by early humans...

The bone and stone tools date from the Middle Paleolithic, and are at least 50,000 to 42,000 years old, he says, "In this period, modern humans of our current species Homo sapiens were yet to come to the region. It was late Neanderthals living at the Heidenschmiede."..

"Based on the reconstructions, we were able to prove that the Neanderthals at the Heidenschmiede used a branched manufacturing system in which various techniques known to the makers were applied to one core piece of stone," Schürch explains, adding that such sophisticated manufacturing processes have only rarely been attested from the Middle Paleolithic...

The research team has shown that the early humans who worked the stones from the Heidenschmiede had an excellent working memory overall. The new study results supported other investigations, according to which the Neanderthals possessed great mental flexibility and adaptability, coupled with manual dexterity. At the same time, the varied and elaborate manufacturing processes made visible also provide an explanation as to why a great variability of the assemblages are found in stone artifacts from the Middle Paleolithic.

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Even a Neanderthal can create complex items.