Found: Fire-Shaped Wooden Tools Used by Neanderthals

[Judi Lynn]

It’s rare that wood survives for 170,000 years.
BY VITTORIA TRAVERSO FEBRUARY 07, 2018

IN SPRING 2012, CONSTRUCTION WORKERS in Grosseto in central Italy, stumbled on a site used by Neanderthals some 170,000 years ago. A team of archaeologists led by Biancamaria Aranguren from Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism excavated the site, including the bones of a straight-tusked elephant and a set of items that seem to have no business surviving so long—58 wooden sticks that had been used as tools.

The sticks range from less than six inches to about three feet long, and most were made of hard local boxwood. They are rounded on one side and pointed on the other, with points that appear to have been shaped into handles. The researchers believe that they were probably used as “digging sticks,” a common hunter-gatherer tool for digging up plants and hunting burrowing animals. Wood was probably as widely used by Neanderthals, like stone and bone, but is rarely preserved in the archaeological record.

Some of the sticks appear to have been charred, an indication that fire was used to help scrape off the bark and shape the tools—an innovation that Neanderthals were thought to have figured out tens of thousands of years later. To confirm this, Aranguren and her team recreated the sticks using stone tools and fire, and got similar results. Their study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Because foraging has often been mostly a female-led activity in hunter-gatherer societies, researchers believe that the tools are an indication that the site was used by women. “The discovery of the digging sticks at Poggetti Vecchi offers the opportunity to distinguish probably the active presence of women,” Aranguren told Newsweek, “something that rarely happens in prehistoric sites.”

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wooden-tools-neanderthal-fire-italy

[Judi Lynn]

1. NEANDERTHAL TOOLS DISCOVERED IN ITALY CHARRED WITH FIRE BUT IN STUNNING CONDITION

BY MEGHAN BARTELS ON 2/6/18 AT 11:41 AM

Archaeologists have discovered a cache of 58 wooden tools used by Neanderthals living in Northern Italy. Although the tools aren’t the first of their kind to be discovered, it’s a very important find given how difficult it is for wooden remains to survive for more than 170,000 years, as these have. The discovery is announced in a new paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The artifacts were boxwood sticks, ranging from less than six inches long to about three feet. They had each been peeled of their bark and stripped of branches, and about a fifth of them had been carefully charred in fire along all but the tip. The team of archaeologists who found them believe that these were used by Neanderthals the same way modern humans in certain indigenous groups use a tool called the digging stick to collect edible plants.

The archaeologists behind the new paper weren’t content only to find the tools; they also decided to try to make their own. That isn’t just a craft project—lead author Biancamaria Aranguren, an archaeologist at the ministry for cultural heritage in Florence, explained that this “experimental archaeology” helps archaeologists understand how Neanderthals made and used the artifacts.

The team behind the new paper also believes that means female Neanderthals were present and working at the site. “The discovery of the digging sticks at Poggetti Vecchi offers the opportunity to distinguish probably the active presence of women, something that rarely happens in prehistoric sites,” Aranguren wrote in an email to Newsweek. “This finding indicates that the area was frequented by the whole human group of early Neanderthals, both men and women, because it offered rich plant and animal resources, favored by the hot springs, in a period [that was] getting colder.”

More:
http://www.newsweek.com/neanderthal-tools-discovered-italy-charred-fire-stunning-condition-800238?piano_t=1

[Docreed2003]

2. K&R

So cool!

[WhiteTara]

3. women at the forefront again.

even 170,000 years ago. No wonder men are terrified of us. We're just way too smart and innovative.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. LOL, should have guessed it was boxwood.

Nothing wears longer.

It's worth noting that the use of fire here seems to be just for crude shaping, not the more sophisticated "fire hardening" used to make spear points etc.