A bone tool known as a lissoir, possibly used to prepare animal skins (Image: Image courtesy of the Abri Peyrony and Pech-de-l’Azé I Projects) Neanderthal toolmakers

Two Stone Age humans watch intently as their teacher works on a fragment of rib. With a final flourish the tool is complete, and one student moves in for a closer look. Communication is difficult in the absence of a common language. “Now you try,” gestures the Neanderthal teacher.

The scene may not be as far-fetched as it might seem. A team of archaeologists has found evidence to suggest that Neanderthals were the first to produce a type of specialised bone tool, still used in some modern cultures today. The find is the best evidence yet that we may have – on rare occasions – learned a trick or two from our extinct cousins.


Neanderthals evolved in Europe 200,000 years ago, about the same time that our species first appeared in Africa (see diagram). Modern humans had made it to Europe by about 44,000 years ago, and the two species lived side-by-side for thousands of years.

During that time, Europe’s Neanderthals suddenly began making relatively sophisticated tools, similar to those produced by our species. This suggests one obvious conclusion, says Shannon McPherron at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany: “Neanderthals were being influenced by the modern humans.”

Perhaps that is not the full story, though. McPherron and Marie Soressi at Leiden University in the Netherlands, with colleagues, have just finished excavating two sites in south-west France that are 45,000 and 51,000 years old. As such, they slightly predate the accepted first appearance of our species in Europe.

At both sites, the team found specialised tools made of polished bone, similar to those still used in some cultures today to process animal hides and make leather. Unless humans arrived in Europe earlier than we thought, the sophisticated bone tools can only have been fashioned by Neanderthal hands, says McPherron. “We’ve added a whole new component to Neanderthal behaviour.”

Other Neanderthal tools made of bone have all been shaped by chipping away bits of bone, much like stone tools are made. The polishing treatment suggests those who made the tools had a grasp on the material properties of bone.

Who copied whom?

There’s an intriguing wrinkle to the discovery. The bone tools are the earliest of their type yet found, but we know that humans used similar ones later. Our species may simply have invented the same tools independently at a later date – but equally, we may have learned to make them by copying Neanderthals. “It seems fair to at least consider the possibility,” says McPherron.

The idea that technologies or traditions passed from Neanderthals to humans has been raised before, says Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum in London. “For example, it is not clear which population first started the tradition of burial of the dead.”

Joao Zilhao at the University of Barcelona in Spain, meanwhile, has argued that the fashion among early humans for wearing pendants of animal bone and teeth originally came from Neanderthals. He says he has no problem, in principle, with humans learning new tool technologies from our extinct cousins.

But in general, most researchers – including Stringer and McPherron – think that the bulk of any cultural exchange passed the other way, from humans to Neanderthals.

There’s an obvious reason, says Fred Coolidge at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs: humans had much more to offer. At archaeological sites across Europe, the remains of our species are associated with an array of sophisticated artefacts – including projectile weapons, cave paintings and sculptures – not found at Neanderthal sites.

“It is just about possible that over tens of thousands of years Neanderthals thought up a way of doing one thing – making these tools – that humans hadn’t thought of before,” says Coolidge.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1302730110