Turkish cave finds suggest Neanderthals and modern humans shared shell traditions

New work from Üçağızlı II Cave in southern Türkiye indicates Neanderthals and modern humans used the same site for more than 20,000 years, made similar stone tools, and deliberately collected the same nutritionally poor marine shells, SciTechDaily reported, citing an international team including Kyoto University. The Levant corridor linked Africa and Eurasia and is a likely contact zone, but human remains from the period are rare. Five years of excavation found modern human fossils dated to approximately 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. Shared shell collecting matters because symbolic objects have often been treated as a modern-human hallmark; selecting the same unusual shells raises the chance of shared preferences or a regional tradition, corresponding author Naoki Morimoto of Kyoto University said. The team frames the pattern as deep cultural interaction rather than only parallel adaptation to the same environment.