THREE NEANDERTHAL STONE TOOLS IN VICTORIAN MUSEUM BOXES

three flint scrapers housed in two glass-lidded Victorian museum specimen boxes,

dimensions of the tools in cm: 9.7 x 6.5, 8.7 x 7.2 and 7.7 x 5.4cm

Imagine holding in your hand a stone tool which was created by an extinct human species – the Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis), which became extinct approximately 40,000 years ago. These stone tools, found in the Dordogne Region of France, functioned as scrapers, which were used to prepare animal skins for clothing etc. In popular thought, ‘Neanderthal’ epitomises the primitive concept of ‘caveman’. However, in recent decades it has been established that they buried their dead and provided funerary offerings. Growing evidence suggests that they also wore jewellery crafted from feathers, claws and shells, decorated themselves using pigments, and created cave art. These discoveries show that far from being brutish and stupid, Neanderthals were very similar to our own species.