As Homo sapiens, we regularly think about ourselves to be essentially the most clever hominins. But that doesn’t imply our species was the primary to find every thing; it seems that Neanderthals discovered a technique to manufacture synthetics lengthy earlier than we ever did.
Neanderthal instruments would possibly look comparatively easy, however new analysis reveals that Homo neanderthalensis devised a technique of producing a glue derived from birch tar to carry them collectively about 200,000 years in the past—and it was powerful. This historic superglue made bone and stone adhere to wooden, was waterproof, and didn’t decompose. The tar was additionally used a hundred thousand years earlier than fashionable people got here up with something artificial.
A metamorphosis
After learning historic instruments that carry residue from this glue, a staff of researchers from the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and different establishments in Germany discovered proof that this glue wasn’t simply the unique tar; it had been reworked ultimately. This raises the query of what was concerned in that transformation.
To see how Neanderthals might have transformed birch tar into glue, the analysis staff tried a number of completely different processing strategies. Any suspicion that the tar got here straight from birch bushes didn’t maintain up as a result of birch bushes don’t secrete something that labored as an adhesive. So what sort of processing was wanted?
Each method that was examined used solely supplies that Neanderthals would have been in a position to entry. Condensation strategies, which contain burning birch bark on cobblestones so the tar can condense on the stones, were the best methods used—permitting bark to burn above floor doesn’t actually contain a lot thought past lighting a fireplace.
The different strategies concerned a recipe the place the bark was not really burned however heated after being positioned underground. Two of those strategies concerned burying rolls of bark in embers that may warmth them and produce tar. The third technique would distill the tar. Because there were no ceramics in the course of the Stone Age, sediment was formed into higher and decrease buildings to carry the bark, which was then heated by fireplace. Distilled tar would slowly drip from the higher construction into the decrease one.
The underground
The ensuing tars were all put through chemical and molecular evaluation, in addition to micro-CT scans, to find out which got here closest to the residue on precise Neanderthal instruments. Tars synthesized underground were closest to the residue on the unique artifacts.
“[Neanderthals] distilled tar in an intentionally created underground environment that restricted oxygen flow and remained invisible during the process,” the researchers wrote. “This degree of complexity is unlikely to have been invented spontaneously.”
There was one piece of proof that made the underground strategies stand out. Only the tar produced underground contained a important quantity of suberin, a polymer present in birch bark that was additionally distinguished within the historic software residue. There was hardly any suberin within the tar created by burning bark above floor.
“Our results suggest that Neanderthals invented or developed this process based on previous simpler methods and constitute one of the clearest indicators of cumulative cultural evolution in the European Middle Palaeolithic,” the researchers additionally mentioned within the examine. While there’s a likelihood that Homo sapiens may need proven Neanderthals the right way to make birch tar, no proof for this has been discovered, though it’s recognized that the species did overlap and interbreed. The researchers assume it’s almost certainly that Neanderthal capabilities were extra superior than many thought. Maybe “Neanderthal” ought to now not be used as an insult.
Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2023. DOI: 10.1007/s12520-023-01789-2 (About DOIs).
Elizabeth Rayne is a creature who writes. Her work has appeared on SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Grunge, Den of Geek, and Forbidden Futures. When not writing, she is both shapeshifting, drawing, or cosplaying as a character no one ever heard of. Follow her on Twitter @quothravenrayne.