Ancient Bone Tool Discovery in Morocco Reveals Early Human Clothing Production

The discovery took place in the Contrebandiers Cave, near the Atlantic coast of Morocco, reports The National News. "The bone tools from the Contrebandiers Cave demonstrate that around 120,000 years ago, Homo sapiens began to intensify the use of bone to manufacture formal tools and use them for specific tasks, including leather and fur working," said Dr. Emily Hallett, a researcher who participated in the study. This versatility seems to be at the root of our species and not a feature that emerged after the expansions into Eurasia."

She identified a pattern of cut marks on the bones of carnivores. According to her, the cave’s occupants were skinning these bones for fur rather than transforming them into meat. According to experts, the manufacture of clothing and the tools necessary to create clothing and footwear are milestones in the history of humanity, allowing us to discover the progress made by people in cultural and cognitive evolution. They believe that clothing and the tools used to make them were essential to allow people to extend their niche from Pleistocene Africa to new environments that brought new ecological challenges.

By comparing the tools she identified with others in the archaeological records, Dr. Hallett found that they had the same shapes and marks as the leather tools described by other researchers. "The combination of carnivore bones with skinning marks and bone tools likely used for fur processing provides very suggestive indirect evidence for early clothing in the archaeological record," she said. "But given the level of specialization of this assemblage, these tools are likely part of a broader tradition with earlier examples that have not yet been found."

The researchers made another discovery, that of the tip of a whale or dolphin tooth that was compatible with use as a pressure flaker, a device used to shape stone tools. This is the first documented use of a marine mammal tooth by humans and the only Pleistocene marine mammal remain from North Africa.