PARIS — Researchers have found what they say are specialized bone tools made by Neanderthals in Europe thousands of years before modern humans are thought to have arrived to share such skills, a discovery that suggests modern man’s distant cousins were more advanced than previously believed.
In a paper published online Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers discuss their discovery of four fragments of bone in southwestern France that they say were used as lissoirs, or smoothers, to make animal hides tougher and more water-resistant.
The researchers believe the oldest tool is 51,000 years old, while the other three are between 42,000 and 47,000 years old. Similar tools are still used by leather workers to this day.
The find adds to an evolving understanding that these distant cousins weren’t perhaps the brutes they have come to represent in popular culture.
