NEANDERTHAL INVENTIONS
These caveman creations kept our ancient hunter-gatherer relatives alive
WORDS
SCOTT DUTFIELD
DID YOU KNOW?
A Neanderthal’s brain could grow to around 1,750 square centimetres etween 40,000 and 400,000 years ago, our prehistoric cousins
B wandered throughout Europe and Asia. Homo neanderthalensis, commonly known as the Neanderthals, were a species that diverged from human lineage approximately 500,000 years ago. Often depicted as dim-witted cavemen, the Neanderthals were far from mindless firewielding apes. The use of fire was a turning point in human evolution. It changed the way our prehistoric ancestors ate food and stayed warm in frigid environments. Having access to a blazing fire during an ice age may have made the difference between life and death. It has long been debated whether or not Neanderthals were able to make their own fire or simply ‘harvested’ flames from natural wildfires and carried burning sticks to their settlements. In 2018, researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands found mineral traces of pyrite on the surfaces of Neanderthal hand axes. Many of the tools made by Neanderthals were made from flint, a hard sedimentary rock commonly found in Europe.