Eight pieces of 150,000-year-old ancient claws and an unknown foot bone that were found by scientists 100 years ago at Krapina Neanderthal site in Croatia are now thought by researchers from the University of Kansas to have once been used as Neanderthal body ornaments.
According to one of the scientists, Professor Frayer, it can be concluded from their physical appearance that all of the ornaments were once polished, manipulated and used for quite some time. It's also believed they were once attached to one another by a thread or string that formed either a necklace or a bracelet.
The study that was published in the journal PLOS ONE, an American journal of science published by the Public Library of Science (PLOS) since 2006, shows the ancient bracelets and necklaces are made from the claws of at least three different species of ancient European gigantic birds. They further found 21 edge-smoothed cut marks on four of the talons and the fact that the talons were actually polished by rubbing them against one another.
This is surprising as our early ancestors are known as the first homo sapien group who arrived in the continent only some 70,000 years ago. It means 80,000 years before species of our kind reached the European continent, Neanderthals were capable of making their own jewelry. This has proven the Neanderthals to be more civilized than we have known so far.
They ere intelligent enough to make planning and familiarize themselves with symbols that might have been contained in the ornaments. "Neanderthals are often thought of to be simple-minded mumbling, bumbling, stumbling fools. But the more we know about them, the more sophisticated they've become," Professor Frayer told journal PLOS ONE
Another thought is that eagles were not easy to catch and it must have involved very careful planning and tactics, further proving they were far smarter than previously thought.
