Wooden tools hint at fire use by early Neanderthals

Popular Archaeology ^ | Monday, February 05, 2018 | editors

[SunkenCiv]

A study suggests that early Neanderthals in southern Tuscany may have used fire to manufacture wooden tools used for foraging. In 2012, excavations for constructing thermal baths at Poggetti Vecchi, nestled at the foot of a hill in Grosseto in southern Tuscany, turned up a trove of wooden implements and fossil bones of the straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus. The site was radiometrically dated to the late Middle Pleistocene, around 171,000 years ago, when early Neanderthals inhabited the region. Biancamaria Aranguren and colleagues report that most of the wooden implements were hewn from boxwood branches and likely used as digging sticks. The ends of the 100 cm-long sticks were fashioned into blunt points and rounded handles useful for foraging; such digging sticks have been known to be used for gathering plants and hunting small game. Cut marks and striations on the sticks bear witness to the manufacturing process, and signs of superficial charring and microanalysis of blackened surfaces suggest the use of fire, in addition to stone tools, to scrape and shape the sticks. The choice of boxwood, among the hardiest and heaviest of European timbers, and the inferred use of fire buttress the technical mastery of toolmaking by early Neanderthals, and suggest the early use of pyrotechnology for fabricating wooden tools. According to the authors, the finds at Poggetti Vecchi furnish some of the earliest evidence of wood processing and fire use by Neanderthals.

[SunkenCiv]

The problem is always the same -- why this and why that about the Neandertal turn out to be based on nothing. They didn't eat fish, oh wait, they did. They didn't make any art. Oh wait, they did. They weren't able to speak. Oh wait, they were...

[Little Bill]

You have appoint. The thing that has bothered me over the years and a few thousand books is the feeling that modern man doesn't fit when compared to pre-modern humans.

Why I have this feeling ain't got a clue and if there is or isn't I will probably never find out.