Neanderthals and humans shared toolkit at Turkey cave
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- Naoki Morimoto at Kyoto University led the first full archaeological dig at Üçağızlı II cave on Turkey's Mediterranean coast in 2020, recovering nearly 20,000 stone artefacts from deposits left by Neanderthals (77,000–59,000 years ago) and Homo sapiens (59,000–47,000 years ago).
- Stone-tool technology used by both species remained "extraordinarily consistent" across every occupational layer, with the foundational toolkit identical throughout the 30,000-year sequence, according to Morimoto.
- Columbella rustica shells — a small sea snail with no obvious utilitarian value — appeared ~30 times across all deposits left by both species, with some shells broken at the point or holed in ways suggesting possible decorative use.
- Morimoto's team proposes regional contact, cultural exchange, or overlapping occupational territories as the "plausible explanation," though they acknowledge they cannot definitively prove temporal or physical overlap at the site.
- John Gowlett at the University of Liverpool said the relationship puzzle has grown from "100 to 1000 pieces," noting that while Neanderthals and modern humans likely maintained a strong 'us and them' distinction, "this did not need to mean separate material cultures."
- Chris Stringer at London's Natural History Museum pointed to evidence of Neanderthal–Homo sapiens cultural sharing at older Levantine sites and noted recent studies suggest the two species interbred in that region around 100,000 years ago — and possibly again at Üçağızlı.
Why it matters: The findings challenge the long-standing assumption that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens maintained wholly distinct material cultures during their 200,000-year overlap, instead pointing toward cultural transmission or shared symbolic behavior. If the consistency in toolkits and shell-collecting reflects exchange rather than parallel invention, it reframes Neanderthals as active cultural participants rather than a species Homo sapiens simply replaced.
