- Neanderthals used glue to make stone tools 40,000 years ago, a new study suggests "Earliest evidence of a multi-component adhesive in Europe" [02/22/2024]
- Tools with handles even more ancient [12/15/2008]
Posted on 07/01/2019 9:19:39 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
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 what is now Italy's west coast.
Those caves were home to Neanderthals who lived in Europe during the Middle Paleolithic period, thousands of years before Homo sapiens set foot on the continent. Archaeologists have uncovered more than 1,000 stone tools from the two sites, including pieces of flint that measured not much more than an inch or two from end to end.
...a chemical analysis of 10 flints using a technique called gas chromatography/mass spectrometry... showed that the stone tools had been coated with resin from local pine trees. In one case, that resin had also been mixed with beeswax.
Villa explained that the Italian Neanderthals didn't just resort to their bare hands to use stone tools. In at least some cases, they also attached those tools to handles to give them better purchase as they sharpened wooden spears or performed other tasks like butchering or scraping leather.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
The Southwestern Indians would apply pine resin and cook the hafted point and shaft slowly next to a fire. The resin would become rock hard and permanent, The point would break first.
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