Greece claims early blade industry.

A Greek archeological site contains skillfully fashioned stone flakes and blades that date to about 100,000 years ago, researchers report in the February Current Antrhopology.

Comparable stone artifacts from the same time period have turned up in central and western Europe, as well as the Middle East. Scientists have associated the sharpened stones with both Neandertals and modern humans. The new find extends the distribution of sophisticated "blade industries" into southeastern Europe, asserts a research team led by Joan Huxtable of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art in Oxford, England. However, no evidence so far shows whether the Greek artifacts were made by Neandertals or by modern humans.

During the 1960s, excavations at the site -- a limestone rock-shelter known as Asprochaliko -- uncovered flakes, blades and several burnt flints in a 16-foot-deep layer of sediment. Huxtable's team conducted thermoluminescence dating of two flints, comparing measurements of radioactivity annually released in the soil at Asprochaliko and radioactivity released in the form of light when the flints were heated.