Ancient human bones and a stone-age ropemaking tool are re-writing human history

Amanda Buckiewicz

Several recent discoveries unveiled this week are shedding light on the lives of ancient humans, and their inventiveness and resilience as they initially spread around the world.

First, three papers published in the journal Nature describe the discovery of human bones at a cave near Ranis, in northern Germany. Detailed analysis of the bones and sediments from the cave suggest the humans were there 45,000 years ago, surprising archaeologists who previously believed humans stuck to warmer climates at the time.

"It really goes against that kind of established model of how humans were able to spread to new habitats," says Sarah Pederzani from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "So it's really interesting because it shows that they were already much more adaptable than we originally thought."

In a different cave in southwestern Germany, archaeologists have uncovered a tool made out of ivory that they believe ancient humans would have used to spin rope over 35,000 years ago. The discovery was described in the journal Science.

This find is particularly interesting since most of what we know of our ancestors comes from stone tools, since softer materials like fibers rarely survive thousands of years of degradation. But for Nicolas Conard, an archeologist from the University of Tübingen in Germany, it makes sense that ancient humans would have needed ropes in their everyday lives.

"It is interesting when we think about significant technologies that were invented over time. A lot of people talk about the wheel, but rope really lasted a long time," said Conard, part of the team behind the find.

"They need reliable technology, just like we need reliable technology, and so we've thought such things must exist."
Humans living in "surprisingly cold" north

The Ranis cave had been chosen because a previous excavation uncovered stone tools dating to the time when our ancestors, Homo sapiens, started to replace Neanderthals as the dominant hominid species on the planet.

Jean-Jacques Hublin, emeritus director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said that while scientists know that modern Homo sapiens expanded our range as the Neanderthals disappeared, little is known as to how we managed to do this so successfully. "We know what existed before and after, but we want to know how this happened," he said.