Nobody thought much of the bone fragment when it was discovered in the Dziadowa Skała Cave in southern Poland in the 1950s. It would take the better part of a century, and a brilliant new study, for the secrets of the artifact to be fully revealed.
The find, a fragment of the radius bone of a bear with 17 incisions, is proving to be a vital early indicator of Neanderthals’ cognitive abilities in the area. Dated to the Eemian period between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago, it offers stunning insight into how our lost relatives were thinking.
How Smart Were They?
A team of researchers has now re-analyzed the fragment using advanced microscopy and X-ray computed tomography techniques, publishing their finds in the Journal of Archaeological Sciences. The findings confirm the bone is one of Europe’s oldest symbolic cultural artifacts. Further, it has been shown that the bone had been intentionally marked with a retouched stone tool: the Neanderthals carved this, and with a very specific purpose.
“This makes it one of the earliest traces of symbolic culture recorded in Eurasia, which is represented by a series of seventeen incisions made with a broad-edged flint tool, possibly a bifacial knife. Current analyses show that the marks were made in a single session by a right-handed individual through repeated incisions, mostly using a technique where the movement was towards themselves. Apparently, the incisions served no practical purpose,” write the authors of the study.
The incisions had been made during a singular event by a right-handed individual employing repetitive, unidirectional motions of the tool’s cutting edge. These incisions, distinctively purposeful in nature, were not incidental to practical tasks but rather deliberate actions.
The bear radius from Dziadowa Skała in southern Poland’s Upland of Częstochowa serves as compelling evidence for the early development of symbolic culture among hominids in both Africa and Eurasia. Furthermore, it stands as the earliest known instance of deliberately marked bone north of the Carpathian Mountains, shedding light on the cognitive capacities and cultural practices of ancient inhabitants in this region.
Excavated between 1952 and 1954 by Waldemar Chmielewski, the Dziadowa Skała site resides within a natural karst cavity amidst the Jurassic limestone formations of a wooded hill near Łężec in Skarżyce, a district of Zawiercie. The bone, initially mistaken for a cave bear rib upon its recovery in 1953, has turned out to be so much more than a cast off remnant, reports LBV Magazine.
Hellbound and Down 