Another possibility is that anatomically modern humans crafted the hefty tools using what's known as Mousterian technology associated with Neanderthals, but anthropologists believe that's unlikely.
"We consider it overwhelmingly probable that the Mousterian technology we describe was performed by Neanderthals, and thus that they indeed survived longer, that is until 33,000 years ago, than most other scientists believe," co-author Jan Mangerud, a professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bergen and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, told Discovery News.
Most anthropologists believe modern humans began to replace Neanderthals starting around 75,000 to 50,000 years ago. Project leader Ludovic Slimak said the study suggests "that Neanderthals did not disappear due to climate shifts or cultural inferiority. It is clear that, showing such adaptability, the Mousterian cultures can no longer be considered as archaic."
Slimak, a University of Toulouse le Mirail anthropologist, Mangerud, and their colleagues made the determinations after analyzing hundreds of stone artifacts and remains of woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, musk ox, brown bear, wolf and polar fox unearthed at a site called Byzovaya in the western foothills of the Polar Urals. Dates were obtained for sand at the site as well as for some of the bones, many of which "have cut marks that indicate processing by humans," according to the researchers.
The tools attributed to the Neanderthal's Mousterian style (named after the site of Le Moustier in southern France, where they were first identified) were mostly flakes, which the scientists recreated by banging a hard hammer on select stones. It's therefore likely that the original creators of the tools used a similar manufacturing method. The preserved flakes could have been used to make two-sided scrapers, perhaps for hunting, removing meat from bones, or working with animal hides.
Modern human tool-crafting methods associated with the Upper Paleolithic (between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago), on the other hand, "were generally focused on the production of what we call blade or bladelet technologies," Slimak said. The Byzovaya hominins did not apparently make such "blades," which were often crafted from organic materials like bone and ivory. So Slimak’s team argues that Neanderthals likely made the Byzovaya tools.
Even though Neanderthals may have disappeared from other locations throughout Europe and Asia, Slimak argues they likely persisted in this remote area near the Arctic Circle. Since conditions in the region were harsh even then, Slimak believes only strong individuals existing in a well-ordered, savvy group could have survived there.
Read more at Discovery News
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