Neanderthals are our evolutionary cousins. They are part of "another humanity" that we do not know how it would have evolved had it not become extinct. So every clue about your lifestyle is a vibrant find about some kind of parallel universe.
The latest has been the nature of some of their tools : clam shells and volcanic rocks, used during the Middle Palaeolithic, according to excavations in Italy.
Tools
These findings join a growing list of evidence that Neanderthals in western Europe swam or dived in coastal waters to collect resources long before Homo sapiens imported these habits into the region.
Paola Villa and her colleagues at the University of Colorado have excavated utensils from the Neanderthal archaeological cave site of Grotta dei Moscerini in Italy that date back approximately 100,000 years .
In the study published as a result of this finding , they reveal that they examined 171 modified shells, most of which had been retouched to be used as scrapers. All these shells belonged to the Mediterranean smooth clam species Callista chione .
In the same cave sediments, the authors also found abundant pumice stones probably used as abrasive tools, apparently drifting through the ocean currents of erupting volcanoes in the Gulf of Naples (70 km to the south).
