Submission + - Discovery adds rock collecting to list of things Neanderthals could do (ku.edu)
baalcat writes: An international group that includes a University of Kansas researcher has discovered a brownish piece of split limestone in a site in Croatia that suggests Neanderthals 130,000 years ago collected the rock that stands out among all other items in the cave.
"If we were walking and picked up this rock, we would have taken it home," said David Frayer, a professor emeritus of anthropology who was part of the study. "It is an interesting rock."
The finding is important, he said, because it adds to other recent evidence that Neanderthals were capable — on their own — of incorporating symbolic objects into their culture. The rock was collected more than 100 years ago from the Krapina Neanderthal site, which has items preserved in the Croatian Natural History Museum in Zagreb, where in recent years the research team has re-examined them.
The group's findings on the collected rock at Krapina were published recently in the French journal Comptes Rendus Palevol. Davorka Radovi, curator at the Croatian Natural History Museum, was the study's lead author, and Frayer is the corresponding author.
The same research group in a widely recognized 2015 study published a PLOS ONE article about a set of eagle talons from the same Neanderthal site that included cut marks and were fashioned into a piece of jewelry.
"If we were walking and picked up this rock, we would have taken it home," said David Frayer, a professor emeritus of anthropology who was part of the study. "It is an interesting rock."
The finding is important, he said, because it adds to other recent evidence that Neanderthals were capable — on their own — of incorporating symbolic objects into their culture. The rock was collected more than 100 years ago from the Krapina Neanderthal site, which has items preserved in the Croatian Natural History Museum in Zagreb, where in recent years the research team has re-examined them.
The group's findings on the collected rock at Krapina were published recently in the French journal Comptes Rendus Palevol. Davorka Radovi, curator at the Croatian Natural History Museum, was the study's lead author, and Frayer is the corresponding author.
The same research group in a widely recognized 2015 study published a PLOS ONE article about a set of eagle talons from the same Neanderthal site that included cut marks and were fashioned into a piece of jewelry.
