The Bones Everyone Ignored: How Tiny Fragments Revealed Neanderthal Bone Tools in Romania

Calling someone a Neanderthal is an insult, one that originated in a myth. Though, to be fair, at the time it was widely believed. Basically, when Neanderthals were first discovered, it was thought they were nothing more than caveman brutes, stupid lumbering idiots with noggins thick enough to take down a wall.

We now know that this image was quite incorrect. Neanderthals were intelligent and caring, capable of creating tools, and caring for their sick.

Among the materials that Neanderthals used for tools were bones, and bone implements made by Neanderthals have been found from the Altai Mountains to the Atlantic coast. But a seemingly random area in the middle has been devoid of Neanderthal bone tools, the Carpathians.

Researchers Monica Mărgărit and her colleagues scratched their heads at this conundrum. Thus, to address this gap, they decided to examine the faunal remains from the Romanian site of Abri 122/1200.

What they found was the first definitive evidence of Neanderthal bone tools in Romania and evidence of the technological importance of bone tool use among Neanderthals.

A History of Hominin Bone Tool Use

Bone tools have a very long history of use. Despite some early scholars believing that no pre-Homo sapiens species could ever have had the cognitive ability to make and use bone tools, we now have evidence of their use by Australopithecines and Homo erectus.

Among Neanderthals, evidence of bone tool use spans Europe and Asia, including Middle Palaeolithic sites in France, Italy, Belgium, and Spain, and extends further east to Chagyrskaya, Denisova Cave, the Russian Altai, and Crimean Kabazi V.

In Romania, evidence of hominins (that is Homo sapiens and our extinct ancestors) has been found dating back as early as 2.2–1.9 million years ago.

But aside from one possible retoucher made of bone from La Adam cave, no Neanderthal-made bone tools have ever been found in Romania.

But why?

To determine whether this was a genuine gap or more likely a case of excavation bias, the team of researchers examined the Abri 122/1200 cave.

A Cave of Bones

Located in the Vârghiș Gorges, a canyon in the heart of Romania, the cave has evidence of hominin occupation spanning millennia.

The site has been excavated since the 80s but more recent excavations from 2014 to 2024.

Among the evidence of hominin occupation are an abundance of stone tools and butchered animal bones from woolly rhinos, to steppe bison and aurochs.

Now, the thing with bone tools is that often the pieces with evidence of working are the small, unassuming fragments. Based on this, it was hypothesized that one possible reason Romania had no previously identified Neanderthal bone tools was simply that previous researchers only cared about the big and ‘cool’ bones. Ignoring the small pieces or, worse yet, leaving them in the backfill.

I could sing a song about this, it’s called, “Kruger Cave and the cool bones that were too small for a certain someone in the 60s to about care about and excavate properly and now I am left with a mess to try and solve!” I might need to shorten the title…

Anyway, Abri 122/1200 has 10,136 bone fragments, and based on their hunch, some of those small fragments may show signs of having been used as tools.

Every single one of those over 10,000 fragments was analyzed by the researchers, who examined them under a microscope to determine whether they showed details that could indicate working, such as polish, rounded edges, or fractures that occurred during working.

To make sure they weren’t just imagining things, the researchers created their own reference collection, taking bone fragments and testing them on various materials like plant fibers and animal hides, scraping, rubbing, and pounding them for varying lengths of time, and examining them under the microscope.

They compared the wear patterns to what they were seeing on the archaeological bone. When preservation permitted, they also CT-scanned some of the bones to determine whether damage could have resulted from a projectile impact.

Of the 10,136 bones, only 2.4% showed any signs of human alteration, including cut marks and other processing for meat and marrow, but processing a bone for meat is not the same as using it as a tool. So how many bones (if any) were used as actual tools?

83, just 0.82%. It’s tiny, but it’s not nothing, and it proves the Neanderthals of Romania were not averse to using bone tools.

It also means that there are probably other Neanderthal bone tools in older excavations. Still, they lie in drawers or sit in dirt piles outside the old excavations, forgotten and overlooked.

Now before I go on, I know these images just look like a bunch of broken bones to the untrained eye, but they are showing some pretty cool signs of intentional manipulation, the type I sometimes come across in my own assemblages. I just needed to say that because I have been asked how we tell if something is worked or not and bones like this are part of that.

Anyway, the tools were separated into five tool types, namely: Retouchers, which are handheld pieces of bone pressed against stone tool edges to sharpen or repair them. Those with blunt, rounded ends are likely to have been used to scrape or rub against softer materials, such as hides or plant fibers. Intermediate pieces used as wedges, combination tools used for more than one thing and two bones that worked as simple hammers.

The evidence showed that Neanderthals had an expedient, pragmatic approach to bone tool production rather than careful pre-planning. Bones were selected, used for whatever everyday task was currently needed and discarded; there were plenty more where that came from. The pattern suggests that Neanderthals prioritized speed and immediate usefulness over specialized production.

The same flexibility shows up in other tools the Neanderthals used, with many stone flakes showing retouching impact marks, consistent with on-the-spot repairs.

Interestingly, during the CT scan, another discovery was made. An ibex vertebra had a piece of embedded quartzite.

According to Ștefan Vasile, one of the authors, “Seeing the quartzite fragment embedded in the ibex vertebra was amazing in itself. We had to double-check there is no natural foramen [natural hole] on that side of the vertebra, just to make sure it was not a tiny rock stuck in such a foramen.”

“It was a clear piece of evidence showing direct hunting by humans. The fact that CT scans show evidence the wound healed was very surprising. Being hit in the neck by a spear, surviving that hit, making it out alive, healing, but presumably ending up hunted again, and ending up in the bone assemblage accumulated by humans sound like a life story worthy of one of Jack London’s novels.”

Honestly, I can understand the excitement! At Kruger Cave, I found a vertebra from a small, young bovid that had broken and healed, only for the poor thing to be hunted. I think I showed that rib to everyone in the department. I found it so cool!

So, the bones at Abri 122/1200 tell quite the story. Neanderthals in the Carpathians were making and using bone tools all along; it’s just that the telltale evidence was not on the cool big pieces but on the small, unassuming ones. What’s more, it fills a stubborn and rather random gap in the Neanderthal bone tool map.

Bone tools were used expediently for tasks that required a quick, simple solution and then discarded, suggesting that Neanderthals were resourceful and adaptable, able to work with whatever was on hand.

The ibex vertebra with a healed wound was just a fun cherry on top.

Do you think other Carpathian sites have evidence of Neanderthal bone tool use, and why do you think Neanderthals preferred expediency over carefully planned bone tools?

Let me know your thoughts, and if you’d like to support the countless hours I pour into researching, writing, and bringing these hidden corners of history to life, why not Buy Me A Coffee

Reference

Mărgărit, M., Vasile, Ș., Murătoreanu, G., Caminschi, M., Niță, L., Matură, T. F. et al. (2026) Insights into Neanderthal technological practices: Evidence of anthropogenic modifications on animal bones at the Abri 122/1200 Middle Paleolithic site (Eastern Carpathians, Romania). Journal of Quaternary Science, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.70098