Bona fide Neander skills?

[Christopher Charles]

Sure to be the next rage in traditional glue recipes...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/science/neanderthals-tar-glue.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=1&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F0 9%2F07%2Fscience%2Fneanderthals-tar-glue.html&eventName=Watching-article-click

[Bill Houghton]

And good for vegetarian neanderworkers - no horses harmed in the making of this glue.

[Jim Koepke]

Those Neanderthals had an advantage of stick-to-itness.

jtk

[Pat Barry]

I am a doubting Thomas on this article:

Neanderthals seem stuck with unflattering reputations. The entire species of early human ancestors has long been reduced to a pejorative for describing someone who isn’t very bright, despite growing evidence of the sophistication of H (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/magazine/neanderthals-were-people-too.html)omo neanderthalensis (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/magazine/neanderthals-were-people-too.html). And recent research suggests another overlooked mark of their ingenuity: they made the first glues in the form of tar.

Archaeologists first found tar-covered stones and black lumps at Neanderthal sites across Europe about two decades ago. The tar was distilled from the bark of birch trees some 200,000 years ago, and seemed to have been used for hafting, or attaching handles to stone tools and weapons. But scientists did not know how Neanderthals produced the dark, sticky substance, more than 100,000 years before Homo sapiens in Africa used tree resin and ocher adhesives."


Right away I am turned off by the "suggests" and "seemed to have been" weasel wording. I am also not bought in that these modern scientists with vast knowledge of materials and advanced techniques, can somehow apply their current knowledge back in time and reach conclusions such as they have. All the more likely to me that these primitives did collect the gooey tar from trees involved in forest fires or lightening strikes and found it useful for things and then learned to look in these same places for more. Did they make a connection that they could start a fire and manufacture such glues? Who knows. But it is entertaining to think about things like this.