Some of the oldest stone tools in the region were found in a cave in Poland fifty years ago.
The cave in Maopolska has between 450,000 and 550,000 years of history. Scientists might be able to learn more about the humans who made them and their migration and habitation in Central Europe.
The last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans was the extinct human species Homo heidelbergensis. The region was inhabited by humans at a time when Central Europe's climate would have required a lot of physical and cultural adjustment.
Magorzata Kot of the University of Warsaw in Poland is an archaeologist.
We can look at the limits of survival of Homo heidelbergensis and see how he adapted to the adverse conditions.
Archaeologists went back to the site in 2016 after the cave was excavated in the 1960's. The material was dated back as far as 40,000 years ago.
The dating was not in line with what Berto was seeing. He concluded that the animal bones recovered from the site were at least 40,000 years old.
She and her team went back to the cave in the year. They reopened and extended one of the trenches to carefully examine the different layers of material accumulated over the years.
The upper layers contained the bones of animals that lived in the late Pleistocene and the early Holocene. The bottom layer was quite old. The bones of several species that lived half a million years ago were found there.
There was evidence of flint knapping, as well as the "blanks" from which other tools can be shaped, in the layer that yielded the bones. The finished tools included knives.
The age of these items is very similar to the age of the bones. Excavations were carried out in the cave. Researchers described the arrangement of layers in the 50's. More production waste and animal bones were found.
She said that there were only two known sites in Poland with the same tools. The cave artifacts are not the same as the other ones. There are several archaeological sites in the area, but they are all open-air sites.
It's very surprising to find artifacts from that time in a cave.
People in this area used to stay in caves because they weren't the best places to camp.
That would be discouraged by the low temperature andMoisture. A cave is a natural refuge. A sense of security is given by the closed space. The people who stayed there may have used fire to tame these places.
The flint found in the cave was knapped. At the time the tools were created, rarely used as a primary mode, it was only used on poor quality materials or when flint was in short supply.
Isernia La Pineta in Italy was the only other site that used the technique. The tunel wielki flint was locally obtained and not bad. It's possible to find a second site with the same characteristics that ancient humans used.
The team is going to go back to the cave to look for the bones of Homo heidelbergensis.
The research was published in a scientific journal.
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