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posted by martyb on Monday September 04 2017, @09:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the preparing-for-a-PITCHed-discussion dept.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/neanderthals-were-distilling-tar-200-thousand-years-ago-in-europe/

Despite many recent discoveries that show Neanderthals were technologically and socially sophisticated, there's still a popular idea that these heavy-browed, pale-skinned early humans were mentally inferior to modern Homo sapiens. Now we have even more corroboration that they were pretty sharp. A fascinating new study reveals that Neanderthals were distilling tar for tool-making 200 thousand years ago—long before evidence of tar-making among Homo sapiens. And an experimental anthropologist has some good hypotheses for how they did it, too.

One of humanity's earliest technological breakthroughs was learning to distill tar from tree bark. It was key to making compound tools with two or more parts; adhesives could keep a stone blade nicely fitted into a wooden handle for use as a hoe, an axe, or even a spear. Scientists have discovered ancient beads of tar in Italy, Germany, and several other European sites dating back as much as 200 thousand years, which is about 150 thousand years before modern Homo sapiens arrived in Western Europe. That means the people who distilled that tar had to be Neanderthals.

[...] [Paul] Kozowyk and his fellow researchers [...] set about trying to make tar using only the tools Neanderthals had available. These included fire, ash, birch bark, sharp stones, and mesh woven from sticks. Kozowyk and his team tested three ways to make tar from birch bark, and they measured tar output, temperature, and complexity of the task.

[...] Neanderthals might have figured out how to make tar by accident when a stray piece of birch bark began to ooze tar near the fire. Then it would have been a relatively simple matter for the ancient people to figure out that tar was sticky and ultimately to deduce that it could be used to secure their tools better.

Experimental methods for the Palaeolithic dry distillation of birch bark: implications for the origin and development of Neandertal adhesive technology (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-08106-7) (DX)


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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04 2017, @10:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04 2017, @10:08PM (#563591)

    Denise Crosby's character ironically escapes death in a tar pit, having already died in a tar pit on Star Trek instead.

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