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An UdeM study unveils fresh insights into how Neanderthals and Homo sapiens organized their living spaces at the Riparo Bombrini site in northern Italy.How did our Paleolithic ancestors go about organizing their living spaces?...far from being more primitive, Neanderthals did much the same as their Homo sapiens successors: made themselves at home.Analyzing artifacts and features of the Protoaurignacian and Mousterian levels of the Riparo Bombrini site in northwestern Italy, the scientists uncovered common patterns of settlement between the two populations.By mapping the distribution of stone tools, animal bones, ochre, and marine shells across the surface of the site, they were...

Long before the invention of agriculture, humans already knew how to process cereals and other wild plants into a flour suitable for food—and now there's new evidence they did so long before scientists was previously thought.Published in Quaternary Science Reviews, an Italian-led study of five ancient grindstones from around 39,000 to 43,000 years ago shows that milling for food dates back to the transitional period between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens...The Neanderthal-to-Homo sapiens period was characterized by the coexistence of the Late Mousterian (Neanderthal), Uluzzian and Protoaurignacian (H. sapiens) techno-complexes in the northwest and southwest of present-day Italy.The grindstones come from...