If not, why this?
On Crete, for example, tools such as quartz hand-axes, picks and cleavers are associated with deposits that may date to 170,000 years ago. Previously, this island, as well as Cyprus, was thought to have first been colonized about 9,000 years ago by late Neolithic agriculturalists with domesticated resources.
Excavations at an Akrotiri site on Cyprus have turned up ancient thumbnail scrapers and other tools dating to beyond 9,000 years ago. There is also a huge assembly of fossils for a dwarf pygmy hippopotamus, which might have been good eats for the earlier islanders. It’s possible they hunted the small, plump animal to extinction.
“Conventional wisdom used to be that none of these islands had too much settlement prior to the Neolithic because the islands were too impoverished to have supported permanent occupation,” Simmons said. “This likely is untrue. Hunters and gatherers can be pretty creative.”
See also: Neanderthal jewelry? (Who was it said Neanderthals didn’t do this kind of thing?)
And Online exhibit of Neanderthal culture (Researchers: Neanderthals believed in life after death. … food and tools buried with the corpse.)
See also: Neanderthal Man: The long-lost relative turns up again, this time with documents
A deep and abiding need for Neanderthals to be stupid. Why?
and
The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (human evolution)
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