"It became the oldest known musical instrument, and the first known instance of a diatonic musical scale sequence." "(...)it provided significant evidence that Neanderthals may have been the equal of Homo Sapiens in the evolution of humankind"
Riel-Salvatore is an expert on early modern humans and Neanderthals. One of his studies demonstrated that Neanderthals in southern Italy adapted, innovated and created technology before contact with modern humans, something previously considered unlikely. "We are challenging the orthodoxy that all modern human burials were necessarily more sophisticated than those of Neanderthals."