Neanderthals and humans used the technology, new study shows
Neanderthals were every bit as smart and creative as humans.
In the good old days, when humans and Neanderthals roamed the land together, the Levallois technology was pretty much the best available technology of the time. It was essentially a flint knapping technique that may not seem like much to you nowadays, but offered distinct advantages over what was available before.
Until recently, it was thought that only
Homo sapiens had access to this technology and could use it, but a single tooth seems to challenge that belief. The tooth, long-held in a private collection, was recently re-analyzed. It appears to belong to a 9-year-old Neanderthal child and was linked to an assemblage that used Levallois technology, indicating that Neanderthals were capable of using the technique as well as humans. The study is notable because it challenges the long-held idea that Levallois technology is a trademark of human evolution.
A small sheep-sized dinosaur that lived more than 70 million years ago evolved to have a “huge” neck frill as a result of sexual selection, according to scientists.
The protoceratops, a 1.8m-long plant-eating dinosaur that roamed what is now Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, had elaborate bony frills that extended over the neck.
It is thought that the frills may have served to protect the vulnerable neck from predators and helped regulate body temperature but experts now believe it may have had another function: attracting mates.
Sexual selection is the idea that certain traits in animals are favoured by members of the opposite sex, so in time, these characteristics become more dominant in the creatures.
Bringing 48,000-Year-Old Gnashers to Your Mantle Piece
The lead author of the new paper, physical anthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum , explained to
BBC Science that the results from the new analysis of the La Cotte individuals teeth suggest they “could have had a dual Neanderthal–modern human ancestry.” Jersey Heritage curator, Olga Finch, said the La Cotte de St Brelade site is “of huge importance and it continues to reveal stories about our ancient predecessors.” In a
Daily Mail article, archaeologist and dig leader Matt Pope, of the University College London , explains that “this work offers us a glimpse of a new and intriguing population of Neanderthal people and opens the door to a new phase of discovery at the site.”