Neanderthals invented bone tools before modern humans?

Neanderthals may have been the first to create specialised bone tools - much before modern humans - a new study suggests.
Modern humans replaced Neanderthals in Europe about 40,000 years ago, but the Neanderthals' capabilities are still greatly debated, researchers said.
"For now the bone tools from these two sites are one of the better pieces of evidence we have for Neanderthals developing on their own a technology previously associated only with modern humans," said Dr Shannon McPherron of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.
McPherron and Michel Lenoir of the University of Bordeaux have been excavating the site of Abri Peyrony where three of the bones were found.

"If Neanderthals developed this type of bone tool on their own, it is possible that modern humans then acquired this technology from Neanderthals. Modern humans seem to have entered Europe with pointed bone-tools only, and soon after started to make lissoir. This is the first possible evidence for transmission from Neanderthals to our direct ancestors," said Dr Soressi of Leiden University, Netherland.
She and her team found the first of four bone-tools during her excavation at the classic Neanderthal site of Pech-de-l'Aze I.

The first three found were fragments less than a few centimetres long and might not have been recognised without experience working with later period bone tools. It is not something normally looked for in this time period.

"However, when you put these small fragments together and compare them with finds from later sites, the pattern in them is clear," said McPherron.
Microwear analysis conducted by Dr Yolaine Maigrot of the CNRS on of one of the bone tools shows traces compatible with use on soft material like hide. Modern leather workers still use similar tools today.
"Lissoirs like these are a great tool for working leather, so much so that 50 thousand years after Neanderthals made these, I was able to purchase a new one on the Internet from a site selling tools for traditional crafts," said Soressi.

"It shows that this tool was so efficient that it had been maintained through time with almost no change. It might be one or perhaps even the only heritage from Neanderthal times that our society is still using today," Soressi said.
The bone tools were found in deposits containing typical Neanderthal stone tools and the bones of hunted animals including horses, reindeer, red deer and bison.
At both Abri Peyrony and Pech-de-l'Aze I, there is no evidence of later occupations by modern humans that could have contaminated the underlying levels. Both sites have only evidence of Neanderthals.