Neanderthals may have invented specialised bone tools and passed their know-how on to the ancestors of modern humans, research suggests.

The discovery adds to growing evidence that the Neanderthals, once viewed as dim-witted and primitive, had a high level of technological ability.

Scientists found the 50,000-year-old tools from two neighbouring sites in southwest France. Made from deer ribs, they are similar to the bone lissoirs, or smoothers, still used by leather workers.

The implements have a polished tip that, when pushed against a hide, creates softer and more water resistant leather.

The excavated tools are similar to others found at sites occupied by early modern humans at a later stage, who replaced Neanderthals in Europe around 40,000 years ago.

“If Neanderthals developed this type of bone tool on their own, it is possible that modern humans then acquired this technology from Neanderthals,” said Marie Soressi, one of the researchers from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

“Modern humans seem to have entered Europe with pointed bone tools only, and soon after started to make lissoirs.

“This is the first possible evidence for transmission from Neanderthals to our direct ancestors.”

Another possibility is that early modern humans started influencing Neanderthal behaviour earlier than has been thought, said the scientists writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Neanderthals were genetically different from early modern humans but may have been closely enough related to interbreed.

They were eventually driven to extinction because they could not compete with the superior technology and social organisation of our direct ancestors, experts believe.