Rare wooden tools show that Neanderthals got creative with fire

A RARE cache of wooden tools created by Neanderthals suggests our cousins knew how to make implements with fire and used them to dig up plants buried underground for food.

Biancamaria Aranguren of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism in Florence and her colleagues have excavated a site in Italy known to have been inhabited by Neanderthals, called Poggetti Vecchi. They found 58 wooden artefacts mixed in with stone tools and animal bones.

“Historical wooden tools are very rarely found,” says Aranguren. They…