Stone Tools Discovered in Poland Cave 50 Years Ago Reveal Clues Behind Early Humans Who Made Them

Ancient stone tools discovered in a cave in Poland a half-century ago have just been identified as among the oldest ever found in the region.

A ScienceAlert report specified that the tools from Tune Wielki cave in Malopolska are from 450,000 to 550,000 years old.

This dating may enable researchers to discover more about the humans who made them, as well as their migration and habitation in Central Europe throughout prehistory.

For instance, the timeframe possibly means that the tools were created by species of extinct humans known as Homo heidelbergensis, typically considered the last common ancestors of Neandertals and present-time humans.

This means then, that the region was inhabited by humans at a time when the harsh climate of Central Europe would have required remarkable physical and cultural adjustment.

Ancient Tool Discovery in Tunel Wielki Cave

According to Malgorzata Kot, an archeologist at the University of Warsaw in Poland, this is quite an "interesting aspect of analyses for us."

The archeologist added, they can examine the limits of Homo heidelbergensis' possibilities of survival, and therefore, observe how he adjusted to such adverse conditions.

Tunel Wielki cave was unearthed during the 1960s, with archeologists going back to the site in 2016. Dating back to approximately 11,700 years ago, layers of materials were dated to Holocone, and Middle Paleolithic, stretching as far as 40,000 years back.

However, archeologist Claudio Berto of the University of Warsaw thought "the dating was at odds" with what he was then, observing. He concluded that the bones of animals recovered from the site were nearly certainly older than 40,000 years.

Bone Materials Collected for Analysis

In 2018, Kot, together with her team, went back to the cave. They reopened and extended one of the trenches, carefully analyzing the different layers of material accumulated through the years, and collecting more bone materials for analysis.

In their study published in Scientific Reports, the team discovered that the upper layers indeed contained the animal bones that lived in the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene.

Nonetheless, the bottom layer was uniquely older. It had the bones of several species that lived about half a million years back. Among these species are the European jaguar, the Mosbach wolf, ancestor to modern gray wolves, Panthera gombazoegensis, Canis mosbachensis, and Deninger's bear, Ursus deningeri.

The layer that yielded the bones also had evidence of flint knapping, which included flint flakes, the blanks from which other tools can be formed, and the cores from which they are stuck.

There were some finished tools as well, like knives, among others. Describing the objects, Kot explained that since the items are coming from the same layer as the bones, it means that their age is extremely similar.

Camping in Caves

To locate artifacts dating from that time in a cave, a similar Science News report said, is quite unexpected. Kot said, they were surprised that half a million years ago, people in this area stayed in caves, as those were not the best sites to camp.

The archeologist also said that moisture and low temperature would discourage camping. Caves, on the other hand, are natural shelters. It is a closed space, giving a sense of security.

The researchers discovered traces that may specify that the people who stayed there used fire, which perhaps, helped tame the dark and moist sites.

Of interest too, was the technique used to knap the flint discovered in the cave. Such an approach is the simplest used by early humans, and, at the time the tools were created, rarely used as a primary mode. Typically, it was just used on poor-quality materials, or when flint was scarce.

Related information about ancient species discovered in a cave is shown on i24News English's YouTube video below:

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