According to a statement released by the University of Montreal, analysis of tools found in Italy and dated between 39,000 and 43,000 years ago suggests that modern humans and Neanderthals were making flour in the region several thousand years earlier than previously thought and that the earliest millers were probably Italian Sapiens and Neanderthals.

International research team member Julien Riel-Salvatore of the University of Montreal explained that the millstones and pestles under study were found in Neanderthal strata at the Riparo Bombrini site in northern Italy and at the modern human site of Grotta di Castelcivita, located more than 900 km away in southwestern Italy. Tools at both locations show traces of use.

“This sets back the earliest evidence of plant processing and flour production by several thousand years,” said study co-author Julien Riel-Salvatore, a professor at Université de Montréal who chairs the anthropology department.

A pestle from Riparo Bombrini, a site in northern Italy that my colleague at the University of Genoa Fabio Negrino and I have been working on for more than 20 years, shows that Neanderthals were also engaged in this behavior, which is something completely new to our knowledge.” “It is therefore an important discovery.”

The Neanderthal-Homo sapiens period was characterized by the coexistence of the Late Mousterian (Neanderthal), Uluzzian and Protoaurignacian (H. sapiens) techno-complexes in the northwest and southwest of present-day Italy.

The millstones come from two Paleolithic sites about 1,000 km apart on the Tyrrhenian side of the peninsula: Riparo Bombrini, in the Balzi Rossi archaeological area in Liguria, and Grotta di Castelcivita, at the foot of the Alburni massif in Campania. this shows that flour production from wild grains was practiced extensively in Italy by both Sapies and Neardenthalensis. The first millers were the Italian Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals.

According to a statement released by the University of Montreal, analysis of tools found in Italy and dated between 39,000 and 43,000 years ago suggests that modern humans and Neanderthals were making flour in the region several thousand years earlier than previously thought, and that the earliest millers were probably Italian Sapiens and Neanderthals.

International research team member Julien Riel-Salvatore of the University of Montreal explained that the millstones and pestles under study were found in Neanderthal strata at the Riparo Bombrini site in northern Italy and at the modern human site of Grotta di Castelcivita, located more than 900 km away in southwestern Italy. Tools at both locations show traces of use.

“This sets back the earliest evidence of plant processing and flour production by several thousand years,” said study co-author Julien Riel-Salvatore, a professor at Université de Montréal who chairs the anthropology department.

A pestle from Riparo Bombrini, a site in northern Italy that my colleague at the University of Genoa Fabio Negrino and I have been working on for more than 20 years, shows that Neanderthals were also engaged in this behavior, which is something completely new to our knowledge.” “It is therefore an important discovery.”

The Neanderthal-Homo sapiens period was characterized by the coexistence of the Late Mousterian (Neanderthal), Uluzzian and Protoaurignacian (H. sapiens) techno-complexes in the northwest and southwest of present-day Italy.

The millstones come from two Paleolithic sites about 1,000 km apart on the Tyrrhenian side of the peninsula: Riparo Bombrini, in the Balzi Rossi archaeological area in Liguria, and Grotta di Castelcivita, at the foot of the Alburni massif in Campania. this shows that flour production from wild grains was practiced extensively in Italy by both Sapies and Neardenthalensis. Two grindstones found at the base and top of the Proto-Aurignacian sequence of the Castelcivita Cave not only have a similar morphology, but also have intentional modifications to make them more functional. This shows how the use was now so widespread that there was an evolution in the techniques of stone working.