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Archaeologists working in two Italian caves have discovered some of the earliest known examples of ancient humans using an adhesive on their stone tools--an important technological advance called "hafting." The new study, which included CU Boulder's Paola Villa, shows that Neanderthals living in Europe from about 55 to 40 thousand years ago traveled away from their caves to collect resin from pine trees. They then used that sticky substance to glue stone tools to handles made out of wood or bone... ...a chance discovery from Grotta del Fossellone and Grotta di Sant'Agostino, a pair of caves near the beaches of...

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...

Cover Photo: An artist’s reconstruction shows how a Neanderthal could hold a stone artifact with an adhesive handle. Daniela Greiner ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ More than 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals in what is now France used a multi-component adhesive to make handles for stone tools. They produced a sophisticated mixture of ochre and bitumen, two raw materials that had to be procured from the wider region. This is the earliest discovery of a multi-component adhesive in Europe to date. This complex adhesive found on Neanderthal stone tools has given researchers new insights into the intelligence of this extinct human species. The work, reported...

4000 Year Old Boat Salvaged Near The Ancient City Of Uruk An ancient boat, made of bitumen and not preserved organic material, was excavated during the spring 2022 campaign of the Iraqi German Mission of the State Board of Antiquities and the Orient Department of the German Archaeological Institute, digitally documented in three dimensions and completely recovered for further rescue and preservation. Near Uruk, in the archaeological buffer zone, ancient canals, fields and small settlements as well as production sites that illustrate the rich life of the ancient city are located. The boat was found there during the systematic documentation...

A team of archaeologists from the Iraqi German Mission of the State Board of Antiquities and the Orient Department of the German Archaeological Institute have excavated a 4000-year-old boat near the ancient city of Uruk.Uruk, also known as Warka was an ancient city of Sumer (and later of Babylonia), situated on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates River.Uruk played a leading role in the early urbanisation of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC, emerging as a major population centre until it was abandoned shortly before or after the Islamic conquest of AD 633–638.The boat was first discovered during a...

How long have humans brewed beer? Patrick McGovern, the world's foremost historian of ancient brews, hints in Ancient Brews (2017) that this activity has been around possibly at least for 11,000 years based on vessels from Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia (Turkey). How sophisticated was brewing in antiquity? Since the ancient artifact ca. 100 CE known as the "Baghdad Battery" was discovered in the 1930's, the purpose for which it was used has been a mystery. Wilhelm Koenig, a German curator of the Baghdad Museum, discovered it near Ctesiphon - the Sassanid capital and previously in the Parthian Empire around 1936...

Mummy tar in ancient Egypt For millennia, ancient Egyptians used oil tar to preserve bodies. New geologic research shows that the tar came from several sources, shedding light on how trade routes of old compare to those of today. New research suggests that ancient Egyptians used oil tar from Gebel Zeit in Egypt, shown here, and from the Dead Sea to preserve mummies. Image courtesy of James Harrell. All tar sands — crude oils, asphalts and bitumen — contain source-specific compounds, known as biomarkers, which have unique chemical signatures that are closely related to the biological precursors of the oil....

The steep price discount facing Alberta crude is jeopardizing the Redford government’s projection of collecting $10 billion in bitumen revenue by 2014-15, as fewer oilsands projects are expected to graduate into paying higher royalties in the short term, says Energy Minister Ken Hughes. In last spring’s budget, the Tory government predicted it would collect a gusher from the province’s 108 oilsands projects, with bitumen royalties hitting $5.7 billion this year and climbing by an average of 32 per cent in each of the following two years — driven by rising production and expectations of higher commodity prices. Rising prices would...

In a market where heavy crude sells at a huge discount and pipeline space is at a premium, one oilsands producer has found a way around the bottleneck. Southern Pacific Resource Corp., which began trucking out initial production from its new McKay Thermal Project three weeks ago, will open a dedicated rail terminal in a few weeks just south of Fort McMurray and ship its product in leased tanker cars via CN Rail all the way to Natchez, Miss. From there, it's just a short barge ride down the Mississippi River to one of the eight refineries in Louisiana, where...

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. and North West Upgrading will submit a joint proposal to the Alberta government to build an upgrader northeast of Edmonton, the companies announced Thursday. The facility near Redwater would process 50,000 barrels per day of bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands, with the potential to be expanded in two phases to handle a total of 150,000 bpd. The two Calgary-based companies have struck a joint ownership agreement, with privately owned NWU as operator. It’s the first project under Alberta’s BRIK (bitumen royalty in kind) program, which is designed to promote construction of upgraders in Alberta. BRIK allows companies...

A small Alberta energy company sitting on a rich bitumen deposit south of Fort McMurray is hoping to break the mould -- and not begin routine in situ production. Excelsior Energy believes it has a better idea: a method that will recover 65 per cent of the frozen molasses-like oil, about twice the recovery rate of the industry standard -- steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). And even better, Excelsior's method will use virtually no water, and just 20 per cent of the energy needed by its SAGD neighbours. "We think combustion overhead gravity drainage (COGD) is an evolution for this business,...

Energy: We balk at importing "dirty" oil from Canada, but others aren't so reluctant. Exempt as a "developing" nation from Kyoto-like agreements, China has decided to help Canada develop its energy-rich oil sands.The Financial Post reports that PetroChina International Investment Co. has struck a deal to buy a 60% interest in Athabasca Oil Sands Corp.'s McKay River and Dover projects for $1.9 billion. China has been establishing energy beachheads around the world in its quest to keep its growing economy fueled. With possible conflict brewing between Israel and Iran, Beijing recognizes the need for reliable suppliers like Canada in an...

Junk your SUV and buy an electric scooter. Recent claims by various OPEC leaders that the world has plenty of oil left are bunk, alleges Sadad Al-Husseini, a former top executive at Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company. Oil-producing countries are inflating the size of their oil reserves by as much as 300 billion barrels by padding supposedly proven reserves with “probable” reserves and tar and oil sands, according to Husseini. Such hypothetical reserves are “not delineated, not accessible and not available for production,” Husseini said at a recent energy conference in London. Oil production has now reached its...

EDMONTON - TransCanada Corp. alone plans to ship more than one million barrels a day of oilsands production to the United States with an expanded pipeline construction program unveiled today. The Alberta oil and gas delivery mainstay added a second leg to its new Keystone export service that would more than double the system's capacity and extend it to the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico. TransCanada president Hal Kvisle said the added route is a companion instead of competition for projects underway by Enbridge Inc., which is also advancing more than one million barrels daily in new oilsands...

In the unfortunate argument about peak oil supply, what constitutes "oil" is usually poorly defined. Canada's vast bitumen deposits, mostly located in northern Alberta, offer insight into the difficulty of determining what oil is, defining proved reserves, and peak production. There is little agreement on how this bitumen should be classified. Many folks do it the way World Oil does: with explanations and footnotes. One of our reasons for not classifying bitumen the same as conventional proved reserves is the fact that it presently relies on large amounts of natural gas and water for extraction and processing, as well as...

With $80 billion of projects under way or in the planning stages, industry participants forecast that production from the oil-sands region will nearly triple to 2.7 million barrels a day by 2015 from one million barrels a day last year. The U.S. consumes about 21 million barrels of oil a day.