Sophisticated leather-working equipment found in a cave in France offer the first evidence that Neanderthals had more advanced bone tools than early modern humans.
The four fragments of hide-softening bone tools known as lissoirs, or smoothers, were found at two neighbouring sites in southwestern France, according to the study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Radiocarbon dating shows that the tools with smooth edges and rounded tips - found at the sites of Pech-de-l'Az I and Abri Peyrony - are about 50,000 years old, said scientists.
That would make them the oldest known bone tools in Europe, having been made and used well before modern humans replaced the Neanderthals some 40,000 years ago, researchers said.
Neanderthals are better known for using stone tools, and many archeologists have believed that more advanced bone tool use was introduced to Neanderthals by modern humans.
While the latest findings are far from conclusive, they may lead to different ways of thinking about which groups were using bone tools for leather-working, and when.
Perhaps the Neanderthals came up with the idea on their own, said lead author Shannon McPherron of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
"For now the bone tools from these two sites are one of the better pieces of evidence we have for Neanderthals developing on their own a technology previously associated only with modern humans," he said.
But researchers also cannot rule out the possibility that modern humans entered Europe earlier than thought and passed on this technology to Neanderthals.
Still, the artifacts were uncovered in places that show no evidence of any other cultures.
