Archaeologists scanned more than 10,000 ancient animal bone fragments from a cave shelter in Romania and identified 83 specimens bearing clear signs of having been used as tools by Neanderthals, according to a study reported by The Daily Galaxy.
The finds come from a site known as Abri 122/1200, in the Vârghiș Gorge in central Romania. Despite decades of excavation and a rich collection of stone artifacts there, bone tools had never turned up at the site, a gap that puzzled the researchers studying it.
For decades, the old image of Neanderthals as primitive brutes has gradually collapsed. Excavations across Europe and Asia have revealed that they possessed complex technologies and patterns of behaviour once thought to belong to modern humans alone.
A cave known for its stone tools
Monica Mărgărit of Valahia University of Târgoviște and her colleagues set out to determine whether the total absence of bone tools at Abri 122/1200 reflected genuine Neanderthal behaviour or a shortcoming in how the finds had been analysed. Their answer, published in the Journal of Quaternary Science, forced a fresh look at bones that had sat in storage for years.
Abri 122/1200 lies among the limestone cliffs of the Vârghiș Gorge and has long been recognised as an important archaeological site. Dating shows the shelter was used across several phases of the Paleolithic, from roughly 230,000 years ago to much later. More than 1,000 stone artifacts have been recovered there, made mostly from local rock such as quartzite, basalt, lydite and argillite, alongside fragmented remains of large plant-eating animals.
Some of the stone pieces show evidence of careful planning rather than random flaking. The researchers found traces of the Levallois technique, a method in which a toolmaker prepares a stone core in advance so that a single precise strike detaches a flake of a predetermined shape, a sign of considerable forward planning. Yet despite this evidence of skilled stone working, no bone tools of the kind found at other Neanderthal sites had ever been identified there.
Hidden signs on ancient bones
Bones can be gnawed by predators or altered by plants, water and sediment, and marks resembling deliberate human working can also appear when bones are trampled underfoot. To separate genuine tool-use marks from these natural processes, the researchers examined the fragments under a microscope, looking for particular combinations of scratches, polished patches, rounded edges and impact damage. They also made their own experimental bone tools and compared the wear on them with the marks found on the archaeological specimens.
That painstaking work turned up 83 fragments, fewer than 1% of the entire bone collection, bearing signs of human use. Some had served as retouchers, pressed against the edges of stone tools or struck against them to adjust their shape. Others showed the surface smoothing typical of working soft materials such as hides or plant fibre. Several items were classified as wedge-shaped tools, and two specimens were likely used as hammers.
Tools shaped by use, not design
According to the study, deliberate technological shaping of bone was rare. Most fragments appeared to have been used almost exactly as they were found, without being pre-shaped into a particular form. The archaeologists describe them as objects picked out for a specific, immediate task rather than pieces that took time to craft into a standardised artifact.
That practical, low-effort approach likely explains why such tools went unnoticed for so long, the researchers said. Stefan Vasile, a lecturer at the University of Bucharest, said he did not want to be overly critical of the methods archaeologists had used in the past, but that often only large or well-preserved bones had been pulled from the ground.
The discovery adds the Carpathian region to the broader map of Neanderthal bone-tool technology, which already includes sites in France and Spain and stretches as far east as the Altai region of Siberia. It suggests that bone tool-making by Neanderthals in this part of Europe had been in plain sight all along, simply overlooked.
