Neanderthals Used Resin 'Glue' to Craft Their Stone Tools
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.
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that suggests that these cousins of Homo sapiens were more clever than some have made them out to be.
“We continue to find evidence that the Neanderthals were not inferior primitives but were quite capable of doing things that have traditionally only been attributed to modern humans,” said Villa, corresponding author of the new study and an adjoint curator at the CU Museum of Natural History.
That insight, she added, came from 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.
Flints bearing traces of pine resin. The letter “R” indicates the presence of visible resin, and the arrows point to spots where researchers sampled material for chemical analysis.
“Sometimes that material is just inorganic sediment, and sometimes it’s the traces of the adhesive used to keep the tool in its socket” Villa said.
Top: Researchers excavate the Grotta del Fossellone; bottom:
To find out, study lead author Ilaria Degano at the University of Pisa conducted a chemical analysis of 10 flints using a technique called gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The tests 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.
The findings, Villa said, indicate that 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.
“You need stone tools to cut branches off of trees and make them into a point,” Villa said.
The find isn’t the oldest known example of hafting by Neanderthals in Europe—two flakes discovered in the Campitello Quarry in central Italy predate it. But it does suggest that this technique was more common than previously believed.
The existence of hafting also provides more evidence that Neanderthals, like their smaller human relatives, were able to build a fire whenever they wanted one, Villa said—something that scientists have long debated. She explained that pine resin dries when exposed to air. As a result, Neanderthals needed to warm it over a small fired to make an effective glue.
“This is one of several proofs that strongly indicate that Neanderthals were capable of making fire whenever they needed it,” Villa said.
In other words, enjoying the glow of a warm campfire isn’t just for Homo sapiens.
Other coauthors on the study included researchers at Paris Nanterre University in France, University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, University of Wollongong in Australia, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, Istituto Italiano di Paleontologia Umana and the University of Pisa.
The research was funded by a National Science Foundation grant to Paola Villa and Sylvain Soriano.
Contacts and sources:
Daniel Strain
Citation: Hafting of Middle Paleolithic tools in Latium (central Italy): New data from Fossellone and Sant’Agostino caves Ilaria Degano, Sylvain Soriano, Paola Villa , http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0213473
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2019/06/neanderthals-used-resin-glue-to-craft.html
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Whistler Blowers, Insiders
Often ignored is the fact that neanderthals had a larger brain than modern humans, so there is no reason to suppose that they weren’t smart.
There is also no reason to suppose that they habitually lived in caves. It is quite possible they also built simple “summer homes” from materials prone to rot and decay that leave hardly a trace after several thousand years of exposure to the elements. The fact that they used resin is interesting but not surprising.
THEY ARE NOT Like US
— by Jack Harper
Roughly 6 PERCENT of the world’s POPULATION consists of people with NEANDERTHAL GENE$. JEW$ fall INto THI$ CATEGORY.
This is why JEW$ have always been a problem: because their Neanderthal GENE$ MAKE THEM TWICE A$ AGGRE$$IVE AS the rest of the world’s CRO – MAGNON derived RACES.
“Basically, I estimate that ABOUT 70% OF THE present CRI$I$ on this planet CAN BE fairly ATTRIBUTED TO the MACHINATIONS OF NEANDERTHAL-SEMITIC ELEMENTS OF the human POPULATION AGAINST the CRO – MAGNON MAJORITY.”
— Michael Bradley, ESAU’$ EMPIRE
Quite independent of ARTHUR KOESTLER, whose work he had never read, MICHAEL BRADLEY, a Canadian-based writer OF JEWISH ORIGIN, released his own 1978 work, THE ICEMAN INHERITANCE, followed up by ITS SEQUEL…CHOSEN PEOPLE FROM the CAUCUSUS. In both these BOOKS, Bradley put forth his thesis that the modern day people known as the JEWS WERE DESCENDANTS FROM the KHAZARS and that, indeed, the KHAZARS could trace their ORIGINS back to the NENADERTHALS.
Bradley’s website at michaelbradley.info describes Bradley’s findings in part: In Chosen People from the Caucasus, Bradley focuses on the two separate groups of people who came from the Caucasus Mountains of the Middle East: the Biblical Hebrews who emerged from the southern Caucasus between 3000-2000 BC to invade Palestine, and the NORTHERN Caucasus “KHAZARS” who were CONVERTED TO JUDAISM about 740A.D.
The KHAZARS were pushed into Central and Eastern Europe by Mongol invasions, and their DESCENDANTS COMPRISE the VA$T MAJORITY of MODERN JEWRY. Although these have no direct historical or genetic connections with the SEMITIC JEWS OF the HOLY LAND, both groups SHARED A NEANDERTHAL ORIGIN IN the CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS in the far distant pre-Judaic past.
Bradley contends that people and cultures emerging from the CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS — a KNOWN REFUGE OF LATE LINGERING NEANDERTHAL POPULATIONS — in proto-historical and historical times, would have remained highly intelligent, HIGHLY AGGRESSIVE and PSYCHOSEXUALLY MALADAPTED, promoting a HIGH level of IN-GROUP COHESION. These traits, Bradley contends, explain the survival of Biblical Hebrews against all odds and also the inordinate social influence of modern Western Jews.
Bradley contends that there is no mystique of “the CHOSEN PEOPLE.” Monotheism— a purely male and abstract Godhead— is merely a result of Neanderthal glacial physical and MENTAL adaptations or “MAL-ADAPTATION$.”
Proven NEANDERTHAL in-group cohesion and extreme AGGRE$$ION together resulted in a fiercely PAROCHIAL “chosen people” PER$PECTIVE.
https://www.darkmoon.me/2014/they-are-not-like-us-by-jack-harper/
* *
The Thirteenth Tribe
by Arthur Koestler
THE KHAZAR EMPIRE AND ITS HERITAGE
http://biblebelievers.org.au/13trindx.htm