A RARE cache of wooden tools created by Neanderthals suggests our cousins knew how to make implements with fire and used them to dig up plants buried underground for food.
of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism in Florence and her colleagues have excavated a site in Italy known to have been inhabited by Neanderthals, called Poggetti Vecchi. They found 58 wooden artefacts mixed in with stone tools and animal bones.
鈥淗istorical wooden tools are very rarely found,鈥� says Aranguren. They normally rot away.
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Most of the wooden artefacts are made of , and 39 are clearly tools: sticks about 1 metre long, with a point at one end and a聽rounded 鈥渉andle鈥� at the other. Radiometric dating shows they are at least 171,000 years old.
鈥淭he most important finding is聽that they have been partially charred,鈥� says Aranguren. The Neanderthals probably did this to remove twigs and the outer bark from the tough boxwood. When her team tried to make similar sticks out of boxwood, they could only do it using fire.
That Neanderthals used fire at聽this time is 鈥渘ot surprising鈥�, says of Leiden University in the Netherlands. 鈥淭he archaeological record says fire use became common鈥� from 300,000 to 400,000 years ago,鈥� he says. The evidence for earlier fire use is much more sporadic.
However, it isn鈥檛 clear whether they could create fire at will. In聽2016, Roebroeks and his colleagues pointed out that . This聽compound may have been used as聽a pigment, but it is also an聽effective firestarter. Nobody knows for sure what Neanderthals used it for, he says.
The wooden tools found at Poggetti Vecchi are similar to 鈥渄igging sticks鈥�, which some hunter-gatherers still use today. 鈥淒igging sticks are multi-purpose tools,鈥� says Aranguren. 鈥淭hey were used for gathering plants like tubers and roots, but also for hunting small game.鈥�
Finding digging sticks is further evidence that Neanderthals ate lots of plants. 鈥淲e have very little evidence of the plant component of Neanderthal and other hominin diets,鈥� says Roebroeks. 鈥淭hey don鈥檛 fossilise as well as the remains of the animal part.鈥�
Nevertheless, traces of plant material on Neanderthals鈥� teeth suggest they played a key role in their diets. Buried tubers may have helped them survive cold winters. 鈥淭o get tubers you need digging sticks,鈥� says Roebroeks, 鈥渁nd here is the smoking gun.鈥�
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This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淣eanderthals used fire to make tools鈥�
