Prehistoric Recycling Suggests Our Ancestors Were "Green": Neanderthals "Invented" Recycling, Repurposed Broken Tools

New research shows that our prehistoric ancestors may have invented recycling.

Yes, really-apparently cavemen invented recycling.

The green movement is not a 21st century phenomenon: cavemen repurposed tools and broken materials into something that would work.

Over fifty scholars from ten countries gathered to share notes about recycling in a conference last week. The conference, titled "The Origins of Recycling," took place in Israel.

Mouting evidence suggests that recycling existed hundreds of thousands of years ago. Prehistoric cave people may have conserved and reused everyday objects, broken tools, and other materials. They likely repurposed broken tools made of bone and flint to make them work again.

Neandrathals  near Rome likely shattered elephant bones to consume the marrow, then shaped the fragments into tools. Some of the tools were abandoned, but picked up to be reworked and utilized again later, said Giovanni Boschian, a geologist from the University of Pisa.

"Why do we recycle plastic? To conserve energy and raw materials," Avi Gopher, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist, said at the conference.. "In the same way, if you recycled flint, you didn't have to go to the quarry to get more, so you conserved your energy and saved on the material."

During the conference, researchers discussed excavation sites worldwide where there are signs of prehistoric recycling. The examples are numerous-and stunning. One is Qesem Cave, a 420,000-year-old site near Tel Aviv, which yielded evidence of flint chips being remade into tiny blades, then used to cut meat. Sites in Spain, North Africa, and Italy showed similar examples.

Researchers caution that it seems that the ancient recycling was more "provisional"-after all, our ancestors weren't worried about global warming. They were just  doing what they needed to as the need occurred, not becoming involved in a political movement.

Still, similar research discovered sophisticated Neandreahtal bone tools in Southwestern France. This points to a more advanced awareness of tool creation than researchers previously realized-rather than being dumb or slow-witted, Neanderthals may be much more intelligent than previously thought.

"It's adding to a growing body of research ... that's showing that Neanderthals are capable and did produce tools ... in a way that is much more similar to modern humans than we thought even a couple of years ago," Rachel Wood, an archaeologist and researcher in radiocarbon dating at the Australian National University, told the  AP after  the August research.