Neanderthals' Tools Were Their Own Work.

Neanderthals living in southern Italy 42,000 years ago developed bone and stone tools, decorative ornaments and pigments on their own, not through interactions with Homo sapiens, according to Julien Riel-Salvatore, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, Denver. Until now, tools and ornaments used by Neanderthals were thought to have come about because of contact with the species that replaced them. But Dr. Riel-Salvatore said his paper in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory ''counters the persistent idea about Neanderthals and shows that they were really able to innovate.'' Dr. Riel-Salvatore spent several years studying artifacts from Neanderthal communities in southern and central Italy as well as human artifacts from the same time period in northern Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]