As for Lower Paleolithic archeology, this is quite important: experts have discovered a record 98 elephant bone tools in a site dating back some 400,000 years. This discovery could change our thinking about how some of the earliest humans, such as Neanderthals, designed instruments like these.
The bones were collected from a place called Castel di Guido, near present-day Rome. In the faint, distant past, it was a popular trough for the extinct straight-toothed elephant (Paleoloxodon), and it appears that a considerable number of animals also died there.
This newly identified collection of tools shows that the ancient hominids of Castel di Guido did not waste the remaining bones, but established a primitive production line with methods we have not seen so far, at least not in this one. measure.
“Right now we see other places with bone tools,” says archaeologist Paola Villa of the University of Colorado Boulder. “But there isn’t that variety of well-defined shapes.”
“In Castel di Guido, humans were breaking elephants’ long bones in a standardized way and producing standardized blanks to make bone tools. This kind of fitness didn’t become common until much later.”
The site of Castel di Guido. (Villa et al., PLOS One, 2021)
Based on evidence gathered from other places, early humans used to make use of available bone fragments, without refining or adapting them, but in Castel di Guido it was different.
The technique they used is known as percussion desquamation or crushing of pieces of bone with an independent instrument to make specific tools. Stone tools would have formed in a similar way and were much more common at the time, making the discovery of 98 bone tools a surprise.
That’s not to say that the ancient humans who lived here were particularly “intelligent,” the researchers note. The explanation could simply be that they had many more elephant bones to work with than other groups, and that they had less access to large chunks of natural flint to make stone tools.
The tools they produced included some that could have been used to cut the meat, as well as wedges that could have been deployed to create leverage to break large bones like elephants ’femurs.
“First a slot is made where these heavy pieces that have a tip can be inserted,” Villa says. “Then you hammer it and at some point the bone will break.”
One of the most interesting tools discovered at the site is what is known as a lissoir: a long, smooth bone at one end that would have been used to treat leather. Such tools did not become commonplace until about 300,000 years ago.
A smoothie found at the site. (Villa et al., 2021, PLOS One)
Given the diversity of tool types here and the techniques used to create them, archaeologists may need to recalibrate the deadlines for the time when these instruments and their production methods were originally developed.
For now, this seems like an isolated boost to bone production technology. Based on the available evidence, the researchers believe that Neanderthals took the place and produced the record numerical tools that have now been cataloged.
“About 400,000 years ago, the usual use of fire began to be seen and it is the beginning of the Neanderthal lineage,” Villa says. “This is a very important period for Castel di Guido.”
The research has been published in PLOS One.