0:00

Hey

0:00

there, tumble fans! Marshall here. Lindsay

0:02

and I are still on vacation, and for

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the past few weeks we've been working on some incredible

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new episodes for the fall that we can't

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wait to share with you when our new season starts. In

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the meantime, we wanted to share one of our favorite old

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episodes, the Cave of the Neanderthal

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Tools. We just saw in person

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some Paleolithic caves in northern Spain,

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and they were truly inspiring. We

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hope you enjoy this awesome episode as much

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as we enjoyed making it,

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and it will be after these short

0:29

messages. Hi,

0:54

I'm Lindsay. And I'm Marshall. Welcome to Tumble, the show

0:57

where we explore stories

1:10

of science discovery. Today we're

1:12

learning about what Neanderthal's tools

1:14

can tell us. Are these tools keeping

1:17

us up with all the Neanderthal hot gossip?

1:20

Not quite, but they can answer

1:22

a lot of questions about

1:23

how Neanderthals lived. We'll

1:26

find out how archaeologists went from

1:28

blowing up caves to making stone

1:31

puzzles and discover the clues

1:33

within tools. I can't wait to find

1:35

out, right after this.

1:39

Before we get started, we've got a quick pronunciation

1:41

guide. This episode is about Neanderthals,

1:44

which is spelled Neanderthals.

1:47

Scientists pronounce it Neanderthals because

1:49

it's German, and German's pronounced sounds

1:51

differently than English.

1:53

We're going to pronounce it like the scientists do,

1:55

but you can say Neanderthals if you

1:58

want. Now that that's settled. Let's

2:00

get to the show. Our

2:03

listener Leo sent us a question about

2:05

Neanderthals. Hi, my

2:07

name is Leo. I am seven

2:10

years old. Can you name me

2:12

some of the tools that Neanderthals

2:14

made? Leo named a few of his

2:16

own ideas. My guess

2:19

of what some of the tools that they made

2:21

is like hunting tools like weapons

2:24

and bow and arrows and stuff. Maybe

2:26

not exactly bow and arrows, but maybe

2:29

like sharpened sticks.

2:30

I mean everyone definitely has use

2:32

for a sharpened stick, but how

2:35

does a scientist really know what kind of tools they

2:37

use?

2:37

Well Leo has some ideas for

2:39

that too. I think that scientists

2:43

can find out the real answer

2:45

by looking for tools

2:47

in sight

2:49

or matching brain

2:52

sizes to close

2:54

relatives of Neanderthals

2:57

that we know a lot about so

3:00

that they can know that if

3:02

they're really similar they might have made the

3:05

same tools.

3:05

Man, Leo has some

3:07

really well thought out ideas. I know.

3:10

Now let's ask our listeners. What

3:12

kind of tools do you think Neanderthals

3:15

used and how do you think scientists

3:17

would find out?

3:18

To answer

3:21

Leo's question, I called up Rebecca

3:23

Ragsykes.

3:24

She's

3:28

an archaeologist and wrote a book about everything

3:31

scientists know about Neanderthals.

3:34

I do a lot of thinking about the past

3:36

and I love to write about

3:38

what we know about prehistory and Neanderthals.

3:41

Wow, it sounds like she's the perfect person to tell

3:43

us all about Neanderthal tools. Indeed

3:46

she is. And she starts

3:48

all the way back when people were first beginning

3:51

to discover them around 200 years ago. Lots

3:55

of individual people across Europe and other

3:57

places were sort of going into caves and sort

3:59

of having a

3:59

scratch about. They wanted to find some old

4:02

bits of animals because people knew that you could get old

4:04

bones out of caves. These were the

4:06

early archaeologists, people

4:08

who were interested in fossils and had

4:11

a taste for an adventure.

4:12

And apparently a taste for scratching

4:14

about in caves. Sometimes

4:17

they were finding stone tools. Wait,

4:19

so how did they know they were finding tools and not

4:21

just, like, rocks? What did they

4:23

look like? These were pieces of stone

4:26

that had been taken apart, what we call

4:28

napping, and made into these tools.

4:30

Napping? Like they needed to take a nap

4:33

from making tools? Napping

4:35

is a way of shaping stone and

4:37

it's actually spelled with K. It's

4:39

not like falling asleep taking a nap, different

4:42

word.

4:42

For early archaeologists, these tools

4:45

were a big find and a big

4:47

mystery. They knew the tools were

4:50

old, but they had no idea who made

4:52

them or when. In the

4:54

first ever Neanderthal site

4:56

that we know was Doug, the

4:58

person who dug that up, he understood

5:00

what he was looking at, but he thought that this was

5:03

from people who lived just before the Romans. So

5:05

even though this guy was digging up a Neanderthal

5:07

site, he had no idea that they'd

5:10

made the tools and that they were a

5:12

lot older than Romans.

5:14

Exactly. It took another

5:16

couple of decades for scientists to

5:18

put two and two together because

5:20

Neanderthal bones and tools

5:23

were usually found far apart

5:25

from each other. We had the stone

5:28

tools in some places, we had the bones

5:30

of Neanderthals in other places, but it wasn't

5:32

until the end of the 19th century

5:35

that those two things happened in the same site.

5:38

The site was a cave in Belgium in

5:40

Northern Europe and it was chock full

5:43

of Neanderthal remains.

5:44

Sounds like an archaeological gold

5:46

mine. It was! They

5:48

pulled out all the bones and tools

5:50

that they could find lying around and then

5:54

they brought in the explosives. Wait,

5:56

they did what? Archaeologists

5:59

did not excavate. in the way that

6:01

we do today. Back in the 18 and 1900s, archaeologists

6:05

actually used dynamite to dig

6:07

out and remove things quickly. They're

6:10

like, no, no, it's taking too long with my pickaxe. Let's

6:13

blow it up.

6:16

But weren't they worried about blowing up fossils

6:18

or something? That's insane. I

6:21

mean, not to mention blowing up themselves.

6:23

I know, but do their credit the floors

6:25

were really hard to dig out with a pickaxe.

6:28

If you ever visit a cave and you see stalagmites

6:31

and stalatites hanging down, that's formed by

6:33

water dripping down. It

6:35

makes these deposits and it will form

6:37

like entire floors that are like concrete

6:40

hard, covering up older

6:42

layers with stuff in them.

6:44

Oh, wow. So the Neanderthal

6:46

remains were just naturally cemented over.

6:49

And so if they wanted to get through these

6:51

flowstone floors, is what we call them, they

6:54

blew them up. Yeah,

6:56

OK, I can see getting tired of using

6:58

a pickaxe on a concrete floor.

7:01

But still, I mean, using dynamite seems really

7:03

extreme, not to mention dangerous.

7:05

Definitely. But it was fast. You

7:08

get caves that were dug in 1870 or something and

7:12

they cleared it in two weeks. And now

7:15

that would take decades of

7:19

work to dig that out. We would never

7:21

do that.

7:21

Whoa. So archaeologists

7:24

are really stretching out that excavation time.

7:27

I bet it's because they really dig it. You

7:30

get it? It's a joke.

7:32

I'm sure they do

7:34

dig their jobs. And

7:37

also today's archaeologists take an entirely

7:40

different approach to excavating. So

7:42

the way that we do archaeology now

7:44

is like light years ahead

7:47

in terms of the way that it was done

7:49

at the very beginning of the study of Neanderthals.

7:51

Wait, so they're light years

7:54

ahead of the old archaeologists, but still

7:56

takes so long to dig out of sight. And

7:59

I don't get it. Don't you?

7:59

get better and faster? Well,

8:03

it takes so long because archaeology

8:06

is so much more detailed, especially

8:08

when it comes to tools. The

8:11

big difference now is that we don't

8:13

just collect all the big stuff,

8:15

the nicely shaped tools. We're

8:18

interested in all of the bits that

8:20

came off during that process of production,

8:23

because it's been realised over

8:25

many decades that you can

8:28

actually reconstruct the process

8:31

of making the object by refitting

8:33

things back together.

8:35

Wait, wait, so how do you refit

8:37

things back together? Basically, they

8:39

pick up all the tiny chipped away

8:41

pieces of stone from the floors of

8:44

Neanderthal sites and put them

8:46

back together like a jigsaw puzzle.

8:49

What you can do is dig up

8:51

your layer, get all the stone

8:53

objects, and you lay them out on a table and

8:55

then you basically, one by one, try

8:57

and fit them back together. Man, that

8:59

would take a ton of patience. You're basically

9:01

just fitting shards of old stone together.

9:04

I know, it sounds extremely

9:06

tedious, but it's also

9:08

worth it because this process

9:11

basically recreates the moment

9:13

when a Neanderthal made the

9:15

tool. When you fit all of those back

9:17

together, you can literally watch the

9:20

process and the decisions that they

9:22

made.

9:22

Wow, that sounds really cool. I

9:25

mean, not that I'd want to do that, because

9:27

I don't think I have the patience to put together all those pieces

9:29

of rock, but it's cool that other people do.

9:32

What that has shown us is that Neanderthals

9:34

were far, far

9:37

away from just smashing stuff.

9:39

You know, bash, bash, that's not what's going on.

9:41

So what was going on? How did they make

9:43

those tools? They had many

9:46

different, really specific,

9:48

systematic ways of taking stone apart.

9:51

In some cases, we can watch them switch

9:54

between one method and another on the same

9:56

block of stone as they encounter a problem.

9:58

So they start off doing it one way.

9:59

and they're like, oh, no, it's not going well. I'm going to switch

10:02

to this other method. Wow. So

10:04

it's like we can read the thoughts of a Neanderthal.

10:07

I know. It's so awesome. And that's

10:09

what those early archaeologists miss,

10:12

by only seeing the big finished tools

10:15

and blowing the place up.

10:16

So

10:19

what we can see by keeping

10:21

all the stuff is so much

10:23

richer than what we would have learned

10:25

if we had only kept the finished article.

10:27

OK, so that's stone

10:29

tools. But what about the wooden

10:31

tools and the sharpened sticks Leo asked about?

10:34

Yeah, those get a deep look, too.

10:37

We basically just study everything to the

10:39

max, so we will zoom in and

10:41

we can identify the different species

10:44

of wood.

10:45

They can even see what parts

10:47

of the tree Neanderthals made the tools

10:49

from. They are choosing

10:51

the parts of the tree that

10:53

are the strongest. They're carving them

10:56

in a way that's not straight down the

10:58

branch, but off at an angle. And that

11:00

makes it stronger, too. When it gets stuck

11:02

in an animal, it's not going to shatter.

11:04

So they weren't just pulling

11:06

down random branches and then making

11:08

them pointy and calling them spears.

11:10

Exactly. The materials

11:13

were carefully chosen and the tools

11:15

were well constructed. So

11:17

where Leo was talking about wooden

11:19

spears and things like this, what we

11:22

do know is that Neanderthals sometimes

11:24

made what we call composite tools.

11:26

So that just means tools made of more than one

11:28

part.

11:29

Archeologists think these parts might

11:31

have been bound together by plants or

11:33

animal tissue. Those haven't

11:36

been preserved, but what has been

11:38

bound is Neanderthal glue.

11:41

Wait,

11:42

glue? Like Elmer's from

11:44

the bottle? Not from the bottle.

11:47

We can see that they made glues.

11:50

So little lumps of stuff,

11:53

just little smears that are stuck on

11:55

stone tools.

11:56

That's amazing. I mean, I don't know

11:58

how to make glue. How did they?

12:01

Well, archaeologists analyzed

12:03

the chemicals in those little lumps

12:05

and smears and discovered it used

12:08

to be very sticky. We

12:10

can say that Neanderthals knew how to

12:12

make glue from birch bark, which

12:14

requires cooking it basically

12:17

for a considerable amount of time.

12:18

So wow, I mean you'd have to have a lot

12:20

of patience to make this stuff, but honestly

12:23

not as much as putting together a stone tool.

12:24

For sure. For

12:27

sure. And Neanderthals were making

12:29

other tools that weren't for hunting.

12:32

There are other wooden objects as well, digging

12:34

sticks, which may not sound as

12:36

exciting as spears but actually they

12:38

are super important for everyday

12:41

life.

12:41

So wait, let me guess,

12:44

a digging stick is a stick

12:46

that you use to dig?

12:47

You are correct. Neanderthals

12:50

wouldn't dig with any old stick, they

12:52

made special ones for that. Certainly

12:55

what we see is even when they're making digging

12:57

sticks, they make the same really careful

12:59

choices about the kind of tree and

13:01

how they actually make that tool. So sometimes

13:03

they use very strong

13:06

hard woods, which are really difficult

13:08

to carve, and then they will use fire

13:11

to help them soften the wood up and actually

13:13

carve that off.

13:14

I can almost see the Neanderthals

13:16

around the fire, like just boiling glue,

13:19

softening sticks. Having a good time.

13:22

Hanging out. Yeah,

13:24

we can actually know that they did

13:26

these things. These tools really

13:28

give us a picture into the past.

13:31

But Leo mentioned studying other living

13:33

species with similar brain sizes to find

13:35

out how Neanderthals might have made tools. So

13:38

is that a thing? Yeah, this was

13:40

a really cool thing that Leo said

13:42

because it is really close to what

13:44

we do and the way that we've worked over

13:46

decades.

13:47

Archaeologists and primatologists, or

13:50

people who study primates, have observed

13:52

other primates like chimps and bonobos

13:55

making tools in the wild. But

13:57

they lack some important skills.

13:59

don't seem to have the same

14:02

understanding of geometry

14:04

in order to be able to

14:06

come anywhere near to the more

14:09

complicated methods of making stone

14:11

tools that Neanderthals had mastered.

14:13

Neanderthal tools show us that Neanderthals

14:16

were more advanced than we often

14:18

give them credit for. And we know

14:20

that thanks to slow, careful

14:22

archaeology. This is what's really

14:25

fascinating about how modern archaeology works,

14:27

that we apply our clever scientific

14:30

techniques and sometimes we find things that are completely

14:32

unexpected and they open up a complete other

14:35

window onto what Neanderthals

14:37

were up to that we would never have known

14:39

before.

14:40

So no more blowing

14:42

up caves, even though it was probably

14:44

cool to watch. Exactly. What's

14:46

hiding in the dirt has showed us that Neanderthals

14:49

are more like humans than we thought.

14:52

I would say that they are another

14:55

kind of human. They're another way

14:57

of being a human. They were

15:00

different in some ways, but there's

15:02

so much more shared between

15:05

us

15:05

than what makes us different.

15:15

Thanks to Dr. Rebecca Ragg Sykes,

15:18

Honorary Fellow in the School of Archaeology,

15:21

Classics and Egyptology

15:23

at the University of Liverpool

15:25

in England. She is also

15:27

the author of Kindred, Neanderthal

15:30

Life, Love, Death and

15:32

Arts. That's a book for adults

15:34

and I highly recommend it. Thanks

15:37

as well to Leo Likes Gould for

15:40

his excellent question. To

15:42

learn more about Neanderthals, listen to our bonus

15:44

interview episode with Rebecca. It's

15:46

available to patrons who pledge just $1 a

15:48

month or more on patreon.com

15:50

slash tumblepodcast.

15:52

I'm Lindsay Patterson and I produce

15:54

the show with help from Kesey Georgie.

15:57

Eric Kuhn is our engineer.

15:59

I'm Marshall Escamilla,

16:02

and I make all the music for Tumble. Tumble

16:04

is a production of Tumble Media. Thanks

16:06

for listening, and join us next time for more

16:08

stories of science discovery.

16:15

Thanks so much for listening to that episode, and now

16:17

that it's over, we've got some birthday shoutouts

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to give to our supporters on Patreon. First

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to Zeke, happy August 7th birthday

16:24

nature lover, with love from mom and dad.

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all of his wives. Astronaut

16:32

Eli, happy birthday also on August

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8th. Marley, stay curious,

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and happy birthday on August 11th. Jonathan,

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mom and dad love watching you discover the world

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through scientific exploration. Stay

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curious and creative, and happy birthday

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on August 12th. Noah,

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continue to dream, explore, and make

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little critter discoveries, because little critters

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birthday on August 15th to Charlotte.

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Keep learning and asking questions about the world.

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You'll be a great scientist someday, and mommy

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loves you.

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To Zachary, happy birthday on August 16th. May

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you always be curiouser and

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curiouser. Aviva, happy

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birthday on August 17th. Keep exploring

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