The Neanderthals had developed an excellent recipe for glue: a mixture of ocher and bitumen in which they fixed the part of the tools to be held, but which did not remain attached to the hand.
The discovery comes from the study published in the journal Science Advances and led by the German University of Tübingen and the National Museum of Berlin, based on the analysis of stone artefacts from the French archaeological site of Le Moustier and which had almost not been examined since their discovery in the 1960s.
The use of adhesive materials was known to early Homo sapiens living in Africa, but not to early European Neanderthals, and therefore represents some of the best material evidence of the cognitive abilities and level of cultural evolution of these cousins of modern humans .
Researchers led by Patrick Schmidt of the University of Tübingen and Ewa Dutkiewicz of the Berlin Museum re-examined Neanderthal tools dating back to a period between 120,000 and 40,000 years ago, rediscovered during an internal review of the museum's collections.
On the tools there were traces of a mixture of ocher, a naturally occurring pigment, and bitumen, a component of asphalt that can also be found in the ground.
The high ocher content initially confused the study authors, because it would cause the bitumen to lose its adhesive properties, but they later discovered that when using liquid bitumen, the ocher is necessary to obtain a malleable material, sticky enough to allow a tool stone to get stuck, but not too much to stick to the hands, thus making it a suitable material for a handle.
Furthermore, in the Le Moustier region the ocher and bitumen had to be collected from distant places: this indicates great effort and careful planning.
“Our study – comments Schmidt – shows that the first Homo sapiens in Africa and the Neanderthals in Europe had similar thought patterns”.
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