Neanderthals were gluing handles onto their tools over 100,000 years ago, possibly making the species even smarter than previously thought. So says a new study that discovered the use of adhesives on ancient stone tools that were previously overlooked.
The finding came after a team of researchers examined stone tools that had been wrapped up and largely forgotten since the 1960s at Berlin’s Museum of Prehistory and Early History. The fact that the tools had been well-stored enabled the researchers to find traces of bitumen on them when they were examined. Bitumen is a sticky substance used in asphalt. It can be made from crude oil but it is also found occurring naturally in the ground.
The location of the bitumen residue led the researchers to believe that the substance formed a handle that would have made the tools easier to hold and use.
"The tools showed two kinds of microscopic wear: one is the typical polish on the sharp edges that is generally caused by working other materials," said Radu Iovita, an associate professor at New York University’s Center for the Study of Human Origins. "The other is a bright polish distributed all over the presumed hand-held part, but not elsewhere, which we interpreted as the results of abrasion from the ocher due to movement of the tool within the grip." Iovita is the co-author of a study detailing the find that's been published in the journal Science Advances.
In order to successfully use the bitumen, the researchers also discovered that the creators of the implements had to mix it with ocher, a natural pigment. The exact mix of ocher to bitumen, which they found by whipping up their own bitumen/ocher concoctions, would be just right for making handles that could stick to shards of stone, but not to human hands. In other words, they were perfect handles. Arriving at this mixture and applying it to tools, say the researchers, points out a high level of cognitive reasoning in Neanderthal species.
“These astonishingly well-preserved tools showcase a technical solution broadly similar to examples of tools made by early modern humans in Africa, but the exact recipe reflects a Neanderthal ‘spin,’ which is the production of grips for handheld tools,” said Iovita.
Smart, or not?
While, in their paper, the researchers contend that, "ancient adhesives used in multicomponent tools may be among our best material evidences of cultural evolution and cognitive processes in early humans," we reported on a study a few years back that cast a bit of doubt on adhesive use in Neanderthals. That study, carried out by researchers from NYU and the University of Tübingen said that it would have been relatively easy for that species to get tar from trees that they used on some of their tools. This was in contrast with earlier ideas that deriving tree tar was a complex process involving higher reasoning.
The new study, carried out by some of the same researchers at the same institutions seems to reverse course a bit, saying that finding the right ocher/bitumen mix does indeed point to a certain degree of intelligence among our ancient cousins.
“Compound adhesives are considered to be among the first expressions of the modern cognitive processes that are still active today,” said lead study author Patrick Schmidt, from the University of Tübingen. Schmit added that regardless of what it says about Neanderthals, the find does help researchers continue to draw comparisons between our species and theirs.
“What our study shows is that early Homo sapiens in Africa and Neanderthals in Europe had similar thought patterns,” he concluded. “Their adhesive technologies have the same significance for our understanding of human evolution.”
Source: New York University