Neanderthals used stone tool technology once considered exclusive to Homo sapiens

The tangled history of homo sapiens and Neanderthals in the Levant (the area around the eastern end of the Mediterranean) became even more complicated. Paleoanthropologists recently identified a tooth from the Shukbah Cave, 28 km (17.5 miles) northwest of Jerusalem, as a Neanderthal molar. This makes Shukbah the southernmost trace of Neanderthals ever found, and it also connects our extinct cousins ​​to stone tool technology previously considered a proprietary brand of homo sapiens.

The Levant was one of the first regions to be reached by hominids when they began to spread beyond Africa, and archaeological records suggest that the early expansion occurred in a series of waves . At some sites, layers of artifacts show that members of our species lived there for some time before being replaced by Neanderthals, and vice versa. It was a geographic crossroads, and like all of these places, its history is dynamic and complex – and it can be difficult to piece it together from the pieces of bone and stone left behind.

Often, stone tools are archaeologists’ best clue as to who lived at a site and when. There are many ways to shape a piece of flint into something useful like a scraper or a hand ax, and archaeologists recognize different cultures based on subtle differences in these methods and the shape of the resulting tools. One approach to tool making, which produces distinctive stone points, is called Nubian Levallois. This is one of many variations on the general theme of flaking flakes from a stone core prepared to produce a tool. Another variation on this theme is Mousterian technology, which is typically found at Neanderthal sites in Western Europe. Nubian Levallois’ tools tend to appear on sites ranging from southern Africa to northeastern Africa.

Until recently, archaeologists assumed that the Nubian Levallois was a trademark of our species in Africa and the Levant, while the Mousterian was a trademark of the Neanderthals. But the Neanderthal molar (discovered by archaeologist Jimbob Blinkhorn of Royal Holloway, University of London and colleagues) was buried in a layer of sediment alongside a mix of Mousterian and Nubian Levallois tools. “This is the first time they have been found in direct association with Neanderthal fossils, suggesting that we cannot make a simple link between this technology and homo sapiensBlinkhorn said.

Make a mountain from a molar

Shukbah’s only tooth – a lower first molar – has spent most of the last century in Sir Arthur Keith’s private collection. It was eventually donated to the Natural History Museum in London, so archaeologists have only recently been able to examine it closely. “Overall hominid fossils are rare, so this was a fantastic opportunity to study this find in more detail and open up broader comparisons of Neanderthal populations in Southwest Asia,” Blinkhorn said. in Ars.

Blinkhorn and his colleagues used computed tomography (CT) scans to measure the internal and external shape and structure of the tooth. They compared these shapes and measurements to other Neanderthals and homo sapiens molars from sites in Southwest Asia. In the end, the tooth clearly belonged to a category with Neanderthal molars.

And the Neanderthal man in question appears to have been a young child, probably around 9 years old, who had just had his first permanent teeth. The first molar is usually one of the first permanent teeth to grow, and this one showed hardly any signs of wear, suggesting it was fairly new. So far, efforts to obtain ancient DNA from the tooth have not been successful:

“A previous team tried this, and the drill hole is evident in the image of the tooth, but as far as I know it didn’t work,” Blinkhorn told Ars.

In the same layer of sediment as the tooth, archaeologists who excavated in Shukbah in 1928 found ancient hearths and stone tools. Blinkhorn and his colleagues took a closer look at the notes of these earlier archaeologists and the tools they found, and many of them turned out to have been made in the Nubian Levallois style.

“Illustrations of the Shukbah stone tool collections hinted at the presence of Nubian Levallois technology, so we revisited the collections to investigate further,” Blinkhorn said. “In the end, we identified many more artifacts produced using the Nubian Levallois method than we expected.

Finding fossils next to stone tools is relatively rare, but when it does, it directly connects ancient hominins to the things they made and used. Archaeologists rely on these rare links to identify stone tool makers at other sites where no fossils remain. Stone tool technologies related to a particular hominid species or culture help archaeologists track how, where, and when early humans moved across the world.

But Shukbah’s cave molar suggests it’s actually not that simple. “This study … issues a timely caveat that there are no direct links between particular hominids and specific stone tool technologies,” said the co-author of the study Simon Blockley, archaeologist at Royal Holloway, University College of London.

Same idea, different times and places

Blinkhorn, who specializes in stone tools, told Ars that Neanderthals likely understood the Nubian Levallois method on their own, separately from groups of H. sapiens who also invented technology at different times and places. If he’s right, it sounds like how human cultures around the world have independently come up with the same solutions for other technological challenges, from pyramids to bows and arrows to peach.

“In Africa, there is evidence of multiple and independent innovations of Nubian Levallois technology. Its identification in southern Africa seems disconnected from its appearance in North / East Africa, ”Blinkhorn told Ars. “Given the common context in using other Levallois methods, the simplest explanation is that Neanderthals also developed separate Nubian Levallois methods.

Other scenarios are also possible, of course, especially considering the overlap and mixing of hominid species in the Levant at the time. As always in archeology, more evidence is needed to draw more detailed conclusions.

Scientific Reports, 2021 DOI: 10.1038 / s41598-001-822576 (About DOIs).