NAGOYA, JAPAN—Researchers from Nagoya University and The University of Tokyo studied 40,000-year-old stone tools, including small stone points used as tips for hunting weapons, which were used by people of the Early Ahmarian culture and the Protoaurignacian culture. It is thought that these innovative tools and weapons helped modern humans migrate from west Asia to Europe, where they had a significant advantage over Neanderthals. “We’re not so special, I don’t think we survived Neanderthals simply because of technological competence,” Seiji Kadowaki of Nagoya University said in a press release. The team found that the points appeared in Europe 3,000 years earlier than in the Levant. “We looked at the basic timeline revealed by similar stone points, and it shows that humans were using them in Europe before they appeared in the Levant—the opposite of what we’d expect if the innovation had led to the humans’ migration from Africa to Europe,” Kadowaki explained. For a study of later tools in Europe, see "The Neolithic Toolkit."
