SCIENTIFIC EDUCATIONAL CENTER science idea

A team of researchers from Italy, the United States, Switzerland and France found that about 400 thousand years ago, the ancient inhabitants of Castel di Guido, on the outskirts of modern Rome, made a large number of tools from elephant bones. In the manufacture of these tools, methods were used that became widespread only a hundred thousand years later.

At that time, there was a ravine with a flowing stream on the site of the current Castel di Guido. The straight-tusked elephants (Paleoloxodon antiquus) that lived in Europe at that time went down there to drink, but sometimes they fell off the slopes and died. Local hominids (the authors of the work believe that these were Neanderthals who recently appeared in Europe) used their bones for many years. The researchers report that they made the tools using a systematic standardized approach, which somewhat resembles the work of one person on a primitive conveyor.

"In Castel di Guido, people broke the long bones of elephants in a standard way and produced standard blanks for making bone tools," says archaeologist Paola Villa. "Such traits became commonplace much later."

Paola Villa and her colleagues identified 98 bone tools from Castel di Guido, found from 1979 to 1991. This is the largest number of fragments of bone tools made by ancient hominids, known to archaeologists. Some of the tools were pointed and could theoretically be used for cutting meat. Others were shaped like a wedge and were intended for dissecting the heavy long bones of elephants. "First you make a groove in which you can insert these heavy tools with a cutting edge," says Paola Villa. — Then you hit the tool with a hammer, and at some point the bone will break."

One tool was different from the others. It was not carved from the bone of an elephant, but of a wild bull. One end of this tool is smooth. It resembles the tools that archaeologists call the French word lissoir (in Russian terminology, it is polished or ironed). Such tools were used for making hides. This type of tools spread only about 300,000 years ago.

Paola Villa does not believe that the hominids from Castel di Guido were smarter than their counterparts from other parts of Europe. They just used the resources that they had. There is not much suitable flint in this region of Italy, so the ancient people could not make enough large stone tools, but they found a suitable replacement.

The article was published in the journal PLOS ONE
PHOTO: Bone tools found in Castel di Guido © Paolo Villa et al. 2021, PLOS ONE

Source: polit.ru, sci-dig.ru