Elephant carcasses broken down and bones turned into tools, archaeologists find

Huge skeletons were broken down to create ‘standardised blanks’ for further refinement, say experts. By Jon Sharman

Items found in Castel di Guido included knives and a ‘smoother’ for leather work (Villa et al)

Archaeologists have catalogued an unprecedented trove of prehistoric bone tools they say were created on a kind of production line some 400,000 years ago.

The experts said there was evidence that hominids in what is now Castel di Guido, west of Rome, broke down elephant carcasses to make “standardised blanks” for a wide range of tools.

In all, 98 verified tools were found on digs between 1979 and 1991 including knives, a “smoother” for working leather and intermediate objects likely designed to aid the process of segmenting elephants’ long bones.