Building a curriculum vitae is a time-consuming process — just ask Homo neanderthalensis.

First unearthed in the Neander Valley in Germany, Neanderthals were long known for one quality: their extinction, about 40,000 years ago. In the late 19th century, the German naturalist Ernst Haeckel didn’t do the species any favors when he recommended the name Homo stupidus.

In recent decades, however, the Neanderthals’ skill set has expanded. They now are known to have made a glue-like birch bark tar (no trivial task), cave art and shell beads. They hunted large mammals like stags and bulls as well as fish, ducks, raptors and rabbits. And they made stone tools and projectiles.

A new study, published today in Scientific Reports, adds another talent: fiber technology — and perhaps, by extension, numeracy, because strands of string are combined in pairs and sets to form cord.

“They were not supposed to be doing much of anything, really, if you go with the stereotype,” said Bruce Hardy, a paleoanthropologist at Kenyon College in Ohio, and the paper’s lead author.