Posted on 12/15/2008 7:43:39 PM PST by SunkenCiv
In a gripping instance of Stone Age survival, Neandertals used a tarlike substance to fasten sharpened stones to handles as early as 70,000 years ago, a new study suggests. Stone points and sharpened flakes unearthed in Syria since 2000 contain the residue of bitumen -- a natural, adhesive substance -- on spots where the implements would have been secured to handles of some type, according to a team led by archaeologist Eric Boëda of University of Paris X, Nanterre. The process of attaching a tool to a handle is known as hafting. The Neandertals likely found the bitumen in nearby tar sands, the team reports... The new age of 70,000 years ago places the practice earlier than a previous finding in 1996 by Boëda's team of 40,000-year-old stone artifacts unearthed at the same location, Umm el Tlel. Those artifacts also contained remnants of bitumen (SN: 4/13/96, p. 235)... Following an analysis of microscopic wear on 90,000-year-old stone artifacts from an early Homo sapiens site in Israel, Shea reported in 2007 that some stone points had probably been attached to hand-cast spears with an unidentified adhesive. Also in 2007, archaeologist Marlize Lombard of Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, reported that modern humans living in southern Africa around 60,000 years ago hafted stone points using an adhesive made from a mix of resin and ground pigment. In 2006, Italian researchers found two sharpened stones, dating to more than 100,000 years ago, that Neandertals had apparently attached to handles using birch-bark tar. The tar-stained stones lay among the bones of an animal that belonged to a now-extinct elephant species.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Neanderthals 'used glue to make tools'A sticky fingerprint on a fossilised blob of wood is firing the debate over how intelligent Neanderthals were. The discovery suggests the ancient hunter-gatherers made tools by sticking stone heads to wooden handles with glue. According to archaeologists in Germany, Neanderthals burned birch over fires to make a tarry adhesive. This was used to stick tools together, suggesting that Neanderthals were relatively sophisticated. The fossilised wood tar, containing a fingerprint and the imprint of a flint stone tool was found near Königsaue in the northern foothills of the Harz Mountains. In a new analysis, the specimen has been dated as being older than 80,000 years. Neanderthals are thought to have lived between about 300,000 and 30,000 years ago.
by Helen Briggs
Saturday, January 19, 2002
BBC News
Secrets of the Stone Age:New insights into the lives of an extinct species of human may be gleaned from startling new finds in Albania. The researchers, from the University of Cincinnati, intended to learn more about a Greek colony that flourished in present day Albania at the end of the second century BC. But instead, the team found an unexpected abundance of artefacts left from a much earlier era: the Stone Age, the period associated with the earliest known chipped stone tools... The team's findings represent the only documented discovery in Albania in the past 50 years of pre-Neolithic artefacts found lying out in the open rather than inside caves. Two of the sites discovered are Palaeolithic (Stone Age), one of which may have served as a Neanderthal home base. Scattered through the region, the team discovered 409 or remnants of prehistoric tools, including 14 associated with the mid- Palaeolithic period (between approximately 200,000 and 35,000 years ago). Most of these 14 stone tools are made using a technique usually associated with Neanderthal man... The abundance of Neanderthal stone tool remnants from the Palaeolithic period may help answer questions about the introduction of farming into Europe, Davis said... A portion of the tool remnants Davis and Korkuti's team found are Mesolithic, a transitional phase prior to the advent of farming.
Stone tools made by another kind of human
by Dr David Whitehouse
Wednesday, December 16, 1998
BBC NewsWoolly rhino offers Ice Age cluesThe den may have been a hunting post for early man Hyena droppings, flint tools and the bones of a woolly rhino could unlock secrets to life in Leicestershire during the Ice Age. Archaeologists from the University of Leicester discovered the 30,000-year-old hyena den on a ridge-top near the town of Oakham during an excavation funded by English Heritage. They believe the den could have been used as a hunting post by early human beings, possibly Neanderthals... The 100 animal bones and droppings suggest they hunted in a land where animals such as the woolly rhino, normally associated with cold areas, coexisted with spotted hyenas, only found in Africa today. Dr Roger Jacobi, a specialist curator at the British Museum, said a three-inch long "leaf point" found among the animal bones was probably used as a spear tip..."It is a type similar to examples from southern Poland, dated to 38,000 years ago. "There are increasing suggestions this technology may have been created by the last of the Neanderthals rather than early modern man."
BBC
Thursday, October 5, 2000
The Neandertal EnigmaFrayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
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Mighty Putty!
They were so bright, NASA pales in comparisson.
Every tool I know either has a handle, or is married to someone who does. *<];-’)
It's really odd: The older I get, the farther back from the present these things become. ;-)
Actually, when I first took Anthro classes, "'Modern Man' first appeared about 25,000 years ago, and originated in the Middle East".
That means that in just over 40 years, things have been pushed back nearly 40,000; and moved by an entire continent.
"I would not have you ignorant of these things: One day with The Lord is as 1,000 years to Man..."; and one year's field study is as 1,000 years more of History.
‘Oh Dad, do we hafta haft today?”
ha ha. I get it.
Must be a picture taken at Mussel Beach?
Yeah, I’m glad I didn’t write that one.
Okay, no I’m not. I’m a little jealous.
;’)
I’m sure they didn’t have those, but probably invented the eye patch. ;’)
“No son, we only do that haft the time.”
O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."
Clams got legs! (from BC)
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