Neanderthals used eagle claws to make jewellery

Neanderthals used white-tailed eagle talons to make jewelry 130,000 years ago, according to a new study that sheds light on cognitive abilities of the human predecessors.
Researchers studied eight mostly complete white-tailed eagle talons from the Krapina Neanderthal site in present-day Croatia, dating to approximately 130,000 years ago.
These white-tailed eagle bones all derive from a single time period at Krapina and were discovered more than 100 years ago.
However, researchers only recently recognised the cut marks on the bones as human manipulations.
Four talons bear multiple edge-smoothed cut marks, and eight show polishing facets or abrasion.
Three of the largest talons have small notches at roughly the same place along the plantar surface, according to David Frayer from University of Kansas and colleagues.

These features may be part of a jewelry assemblage, like mounting the talons in a necklace or bracelet, researchers said.

It has been argued that Neanderthals lacked symbolic ability or copied this behaviour from modern humans, but the presence of the talons indicates that the Krapina Neanderthals may have acquired eagle talons for some kind of symbolic purpose.
They also demonstrate that the Krapina Neanderthals may have made jewelry 80,000 years before the appearance of modern humans in Europe.
"It's really a stunning discovery. It's one of those things that just appeared out of the blue. It's so unexpected and it's so startling because there's just nothing like it until very recent times to find this kind of jewelry," Frayer said.

The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.