Tamara Dogandzic

Neandertals made the first specialized bone tools in Europe

Modern humans replaced Neandertals ∼40,000 y ago. Close to the time of replacement, Neandertals show behaviors similar to those of the modern humans arriving into Europe, including the use of specialized bone tools, body ornaments, and small blades. It is highly debated whether these modern behaviors developed before or as a result of contact with modern humans. Here we report the identification of a type of specialized bone tool, lissoir, previously only associated with modern humans. The microwear preserved on one of these lissoir is consistent with the use of lissoir in modern times to obtain supple, lustrous, and more impermeable hides. These tools are from a Neandertal context proceeding the replacement period and are the oldest specialized bone tools in Europe. As such, they are either a demonstration of independent invention by Neandertals or an indication that modern humans started influencing European Neandertals much earlier than previously believed. Because these finds clearly predate the oldest known age for the use of similar objects in Europe by anatomically modern humans, they could also be evidence for cultural diffusion from Neandertals to modern humans.

Demography and the demise of Neandertals: A comment on 'Tenfold population increase in Western Europe at the Neandertal-to-modern human transition'

In a courageous attempt to infer prehistoric population sizes with archaeological proxies, Mellars and French (2011) examine data from sites in southwestern France and conclude that initial modern human populations would have been ten times larger than Neandertal populations, meaning that “numerical supremacy alone must have been a powerful, if not overwhelming, factor in direct demographic and territorial competition between modern humans and Neandertals” (627). They argue that this difference in population numbers would have contributed to the demise of Neandertals and their replacement by modern humans. The data to support this conclusion come from three lines of evidence, or population proxies, thought to be independent and that when multiplied together yield a tenfold figure. We argue here that each of their proxies include important assumptions that predispose the results to demographically favor modern humans (AMH). Mellars and French’s (2011) first population proxy is the number of sites inhabited by the last Neandertals and first AMH for which they see a w2.5 increase in the latter. The problem that immediately arises here is the differences in dating these two periods. The first AMH sites fall within the range of radiocarbon and have been the subject of intense dating programs. The Châtelperronian too has been intensely dated but only in a very few sites that themselves are intensely debated (Higham et al., 2010; Hublin et al., 2012). The final Middle Paleolithic, by contrast, is rarely dated. When it falls within the range of radiocarbon the dates are so close

Earliest evidence of dental caries manipulation in the Late Upper Palaeolithic

Prehistoric dental treatments were extremely rare, and the few documented cases are known from the Neolithic, when the adoption of early farming culture caused an increase of carious lesions. Here we report the earliest evidence of dental caries intervention on a Late Upper Palaeolithic modern human specimen (Villabruna) from a burial in Northern Italy. Using Scanning Electron Microscopy we show the presence of striations deriving from the manipulation of a large occlusal carious cavity of the lower right third molar. The striations have a “V”-shaped transverse section and several parallel micro-scratches at their base, as typically displayed by cutmarks on teeth. Based on in vitro experimental replication and a complete functional reconstruction of the Villabruna dental arches, we confirm that the identified striations and the associated extensive enamel chipping on the mesial wall of the cavity were produced ante-mortem by pointed flint tools during scratching and levering activities. The Villabruna specimen is therefore the oldest known evidence of dental caries intervention, suggesting at least some knowledge of disease treatment well before the Neolithic. This study suggests that primitive forms of carious treatment in human evolution entail an adaptation of the well-known toothpicking for levering and scratching rather than drilling practices.