Oldest-ever? Flint tools found in Poland cave could be 500,000 years old
Flint artefacts found in the Tunnel Wielki Cave and their drawings.
The Tunel Wielki cave in Ojców National Park, an archaeological site in Poland, has sparked fresh curiosity in the global science fraternity after some crucial findings - related to excavation - were revealed. Flint tools discovered in the cave could be among the oldest finds of a specific type known from this area of Poland. Extinct species Homo heidelbergensis, ancestors of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, could be the creators, as per the research by a team led by Dr. Małgorzata Kot from the Faculty of Archaeology of the University of Warsaw (FAUW). Flints and animal bones are among the finds excavated from the cave in the 1960s by Professor Waldemar Chmielewski, the Polish Academy of Science underlined in a news release in November.
"Bipolar-on-anvil knapping technique prevails in the lithic assemblage, made exclusively in flint. The obtained results have given ground for studying the required cultural adaptive abilities," highlights an article published by Nature journal last year on the research. Bipolar knapping technique involves the interaction anvils, hammerstones, Homo heidelbergensis (also H. sapiens heidelbergensis) existed during the Middle Pleistocene period, about 1.25-.7 million years ago. These findings shed new light for the researchers as "peopling of Central Europe by Middle Pleistocene hominids is highly debatable, mainly due to the relatively harsh climatic and environmental conditions that require cultural and anatomical adjustments," the journal underlines.
Animal remains found during the excavation were initially believed to about 40,000 years old but rodent bone analysis by Dr. Claudio Berto from FAUW dated the finds to half a million years ago. Dr. Małgorzata Kot did not only analyse excavation carried out previously but he also discovered a single piece of charcoal with flint artefacts.
"Such well-documented finds from the Lower Paleolithic are extremely rare in Europe and in the world and prove the uniqueness of the site under study," the Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences, underlines.
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