Neandertals may have built a hearth specifically to make tar

Neandertals actually knew their means round a hearth. In a sea cave sheltered from the blustery winds of Gibraltar, our historic cousins created a fire able to making tar from close by vegetation, a brand new examine suggests.

Earlier analysis has proven Neandertals used tar as an adhesive for crafting weapons, and that they used fires for warmth and cooking (SN: 8/31/17). But the brand new discovering, reported November 12 in Quaternary Science Evaluations, suggests Neandertals designed specialized fire structures to make tar itself.

“We didn’t look forward to finding it,” says Juan Ochando Tomás, a botanist on the College of Murcia in Spain. However after amassing proof from varied scientific disciplines, the researchers had been capable of determine the construction as a fire and notice it was certainly made by Neandertals.

Ochando Tomás’ group discovered a small pit in a layer of sand, clay and silt courting to round 65,000 years in the past in a cave identified to have been inhabited by Neandertals (SN: 9/22/08). The researchers carried out a collection of chemical and visible analyses on the contents of the pit and surrounding sediments.

Their outcomes recommend the pit contained charcoal, pollen and chemical compounds that time to the burning of resinous plant materials, together with yellow crystals they interpret as seemingly tar. The tar was seemingly made out of the resin of gum rockrose (Cistus ladanifer), a plant that grows in close by shrubland.

Primarily based on their findings, the researchers re-created the construction by filling a gap with rockroses, sealing it with sand and soil, and setting a hearth on prime to steam the vegetation. After a number of makes an attempt, the group was capable of make sufficient tar to make two spears from flint and olive wooden.

The construction is an “oddball” for this era, says archaeologist Andrew Sorensen, who was not concerned with the examine. Most Neandertal hearths had been a lot less complicated, he says, and the traditional hominids’ use of fireside seems to have been much less frequent throughout this time interval.

Initially skeptical of the examine’s conclusions, Sorensen says he was gained over by the evaluation of the pit contents and the re-creation. The discover signifies that Neandertals may have used one of many extra complicated and environment friendly strategies for making tar, he says, and provides one other potential adhesive to the quick checklist of these they used to make instruments.

“My fundamental curiosity now’s whether or not they can discover residues on stone instruments on the website matching the bodily and chemical signatures of rockrose tar,” says Sorensen, of Leiden College within the Netherlands. “I believe this is able to do a lot to appease any remaining skeptics.”

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