Tool time in the Stone Age.

Neandertals pursued a variety of toolmaking strategies in their settlements, showing an aptitude often attributed only to modern humans, according to an investigation of Stone Age artifacts in a Spanish rock shelter.

This finding adds to evidence that behaviors long assumed to have originated among modern humans beginning around 40,000 years ago actually appeared much earlier among other Homo species, including Neandertals (SN: 7/3/99, p. 4).

Manuel Vaquero of Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, analyzed the spatial distribution of numerous stone implements from two sediment layers in northeastern Spain's Abric Romani rock shelter. All the tools display a manufacturing style previously linked to Neandertals.

The upper soil layer, already dated at around 45,000 years old, shows signs of brief occupations by small groups, Vaquero contends. Stone tools and debris from toolmaking form three small clusters. Artifacts consist of relatively small, easily fashioned cutting instruments, each of which was prepared from start to finish at workstations set apart from other activities.

The lower layer, dated at about 50,000 years old, presents a contrasting picture of extended occupations by large groups, Vaquero reports in the September ANTIQUITY. Many stone-tool clusters surround a central accumulation, arranged so that large, sharpened flakes could be fashioned in stages at a succession of workstations. Toolmaking proceeded in areas also used for cooking and other domestic chores, another sign of long-term residence, Vaquero says.

In a related analysis of Stone Age tool traditions, Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University and Steven L. Kuhn of the University of Arizona in Tucson conclude that elongated stone blades with sharpened points, often treated as an invention of modern humans around 40,000 years ago, appeared as early as 300,000 years ago among various members of the Homo lineage (SN: 4/11/98, p. 238).

Blades only came to dominate the archaeological record of western Europe and Asia, as well as parts of Africa, after 40,000 years ago, the researchers note. This may reflect manufacture of increased numbers of replaceable blades for tools with handles, Bar-Yosef and Kuhn proposed in the June AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST.