Neanderthals learned tool-making from modern human ancestors

New high precision radiocarbon dating shows that a cultural exchange may have taken place between modern humans and Neanderthals in France and Spain more than 40,000 years ago, the Daily Mail reported.

The findings have important implications for understanding of our long-extinct sister species. If Neanderthals made the ornaments, they must have been capable of symbolic behaviour thought to be unique to man, researchers suggest.

Artifacts discovered strewn among the remains of Neanderthals in the Grotte du Renne cave in central France and several other locations have long presented anthropologists with a puzzle.

Belonging to what archaeologists term the Chatelperronian culture, a transitional industry from south-west France and northern Spain, it has been hotly debated whether they were made by Neanderthals or humans.

Previous research had suggested that the artifacts were in fact produced by human ancestors before settling into deeper layers of cave strata until they sat among the earlier remains of Neanderthals.

The new findings of an international team from the Max Planck Institute, Germany, suggest that the tools and body ornaments were indeed produced by Neanderthals - but only after humans arrived in the area.

The so-called 'transitional industries' like the Chatelperronian culture are a key for understanding the replacement process of Neanderthals by modern humans in western Eurasia at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago.

The Max Planck Institute team, led by Jean-Jacques Hublin, selected 40 well-preserved bone samples from the Grotte du Renne, primarily from those areas that contained Chatelperronian body ornaments or Neanderthal remains but also from older and younger layers.

The Chatelperronian phase is dated to between 44,500 and 41,000 years ago and the Chatelperronian Neanderthal skeleton of Saint-Cesaire from the end of this time period 41,500 years ago.

This confirms that Neanderthal populations are directly responsible for the production of Chatelperronian assemblages in central France, including the body ornaments of Arcy, researchers said.

"Given the dating results, we believe that Neanderthals made sophisticated bone tools and body ornaments only after modern humans introduced these new behaviours in Western Europe. Most likely, some level of cultural diffusion occurred from one group to the other more than 40,000 years ago," researchers said.