New Scientist
Image: oui-ennui
Call it prehistoric string theory. The earliest evidence of string has been found – apparently created by our Neanderthal cousins.
Perishable materials usually rot away, so the oldest string on record only dates back 30,000 years. But perforations in small stone and tooth artefacts from Neanderthal sites in France suggest the pieces were threaded on string and worn as pendants. “The wear patterns provide circumstantial evidence of early use of string, but the evidence is not definitive,” says Bruce Hardy at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Similar circumstantial evidence has been found in perforated shells.
Now, Hardy and his colleagues have found slender, 0.7-millimetre-long plant fibres that are twisted together near some stone artefacts at a site in south-east France that was occupied by Neanderthals 90,000 years ago. Such fibres are not twisted together in nature, says the team, suggesting that the Neanderthals were responsible. Read more on newscientist.com…
