How Smart are Neanderthals? Scientists Discover They Used Tools Like Stone Age Humans

How smart were Neanderthals? They may have been just as smart as Stone Age humans. Scientists have discovered a multi-purpose bone tool dating from the Neanderthal era that's changed their current understanding of the evolution of human behavior.

"This is the first time a multi-purpose bone tool from this period has been discovered," said Luc Doyon, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It proves that Neanderthals were able to understand the mechanical properties of bone and knew how to use it to make tools, abilities usually attributed to our species, Homo sapiens."

Neanderthals lived in Europe and western Asia between 250,000 and 28,000 years ago. Yet whether or not they produced bone tools has been open to debate. Yet over the past several years, there have been many clues that have indicated the use of hard materials from animals by Neanderthals. This latest discovery hammers the theory home.

The bone tool was uncovered at the Grotte du Bison in Burgundy, France. The tool itself comes from the left femur of an adult reindeer, and is between the ages of 55,000 and 60,000 years. There's also evidence on the tool of meat butchering and bone fracturing to extract marrow. In addition, percussion marks suggest the use of a bone fragment for carved sharpening the cutting edges of stone tools. Finally, chipping and polish show that the tool was also used as a scraper.

"The presence of this tool at a context where stone tools are abundant suggests an opportunistic choice of the bone fragment and its intentional modification into a tool by Neanderthals," said Doyon. "It was long thought that before Homo sapiens, other species did not have the cognitive ability to produce this type of artifact. This discovery reduces the presumed gap between the two species and prevents us from saying that one was technically superior to the other."

The findings are published in the journal Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française.

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).