Posted on 06/10/2023 3:34:59 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Researchers at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and colleagues in Germany have taken a closer look at the birch tar used to affix Neanderthal tools and found a much more complex technique for creating the adhesive than previously considered... the team compared different methods of creating birch tar to the chemical residues found on ancient Neanderthal tools....
The birch tar used by Neanderthals predates any known adaptation by modern humans by 100,000 years. The sticky material was used as an adhesive backing to connect stone to bone and wood in tools and weapons, with the added benefit of being water-resistant and resistant to organic decomposition.
How Neanderthals made birch tar has been speculated to be either a manufactured process or a found substance scraped from rocks after a fire. Through a comparative chemical analysis of two birch tar pieces from Germany and a large reference birch tar collection made with Stone Age techniques, the researchers found that Neanderthals did not simply find birch tar after a fire, nor did they use the simplest manufacturing method.
Instead, researchers have discovered that the Neanderthals who made the German birch tar used the most efficient method with a stepwise oxygen-restricted distillation process of underground heating to extract the synthetic adhesive.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
The birch tar used by Neanderthals predates any known adaptation by modern humans by 100,000 years.The humans outsourced it to China, so it took them a few extra years to figure out the assembly manual...
No, much of the time it is the other way around.
Well I wouldn’t assume that, they had a larger brain and
Fact is non Africans have between 1-4% neanderthal DNA (https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-and-neanderthals#:~:text=Neanderthals%20are%20known%20to%20contribute,et%20al.%2C%202015).) and as a race those of black African decent average lower on IQ test than other race.
It could be conjectured that the Neanderthal DNA of other races may actually have increased their intelligence
That replacement theory went into the dust the dustbin of history when the DNA of Neanderthals was sequenced-Asians and Caucasians-and people who are a mix of the 3 races, which most of us are-have Neanderthal DNA-between 1 and 4%-only Black Africans do not have any, unless they are mixed with one of the other 2 races-so Neanderthals and modern humans bred a lot outside of Africa-probably on trading trips, etc-so they are us-it would appear that there hasn’t been anything like a “pure race” on this planet for a very, very long time-and it is a good thing, I think...
This is really cool. I’m surprised glue making goes back so far. I was also surprised that compound bows date back pretty far as well.
I think they were just burning some birch one day and notice a sticky substance afterward and went ‘Aha’ or ‘Eureka!’ or ‘Watson, come here!’
I wasn’t suggesting there wasn’t any intermixing. Probably none of the hominid branches were ever ‘pure’. I’ve read about the DNA in genomes. But I would suggest that the intermixing was less common than the competition and extinguishing. I don’t think homo sapiens (not saying they were pure homo sapiens) just out lasted them in environmental competition. I believe they warred with them at times, particularly when resources were scarce.
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