BrainStuff Classics: Did Neanderthals Use Glue?

Neanderthals distilled tar more than 100,000 years before modern humans created glue. Learn how archaeologists compared three potential ways they might've done it in this classic episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren voc Obam here with another classic episode
from our previous host, Christian Sagar. There was a time
when Neanderthal was used as an insult, with the implication
that this extinct species or perhaps subspecies of hominids, was
unintelligent and unsophisticated. But the more research that goes into

(00:25):
how Neanderthal's lived, the more we learn that they were
quite clever. For example, they made and used glue millennia
before we humans figured it out. Hey brain Stuff is
Christian Sagar here. There are some things people just can't
live without, so we invented them way before we ever
invented writing, coats, knives, roofs. Fire. Turns out, another thing

(00:50):
are prehistoric precursors needed that we still need today is
the ability to stick one thing to another thing and
then you know, have them stay that way, which is
why Neanderthals had glue. They might have been cavemen, but
they weren't savages. Now Homo neanderthal insists used their glue,

(01:11):
a viscous tar distilled from birch bark, to fix weapons
on the heads of a tool onto a halft or
maybe a handle, and Neanderthals were actually the leaders in
glue technology, beating US Homo sapiens to the punch by
more than a hundred thousand years. They began brewing tar
two hundred thousand years ago, whereas the earliest evidence of

(01:34):
modern humans using tree resin as adhesive appears less than
one hundred thousand years ago. Research published in twenty eleven
shows that Neanderthals had the ability to create and control fire.
So does the fact Neanderthals could manipulate fire to produce
tar prove they weren't as dimwitted as we like to assume.

(01:57):
Scientists have been curious about the process Neanderthal is used
to make their glue. A new study published in the
journal Nature Scientific Reports suggests three different ways Neanderthal tar
could have been manufactured. After all, it had to be produced.
This stuff wasn't just secreted from trees growing in the forest.

(02:17):
But how difficult was making tar? Tar making is definitely
a process no matter which way you go about it.
The research team figured that out through a fancy bit
of experimental archaeology. They devised three different potential methods of
extracting sticky stuff from birch bark, the ash mound method,

(02:38):
where tightly rolled layers of birch bark are covered in
ash and embers, the pit roll cigar roll method, where
one end of a birch roll is lit and placed
burning side down into a small collection pit, and the
raised structure method, where a birch bark container was placed
in a pit beneath an organic mesh which holds loosely

(03:00):
rolled bark that is then covered with earth and fire.
After recreating the three tar production methods, the scientists assessed
each according to three criteria the yield, temperature, and complexity.
The team found that though the simplest fastest method, the
ash mound method, yielded just a peace sized amount of tar,

(03:22):
the most complicated, time consuming method, that's the raised structure method,
produced fifteen to twenty times more and was also the
most efficient. They also observed that regulating the temperature of
the fire didn't make much of a difference to the product.
Even though they have no evidence that the Neanderthal way
of making tar was similar to any of their experimental methods,

(03:46):
making the connection between the birch bark, the fire, and
the tar would have required that Neanderthals possess a proclivity
for abstract thought, so whether they were making easy, inefficient
tar instead of something like the high yield method requiring
a folded cup and a little grill made of sticks,
Neanderthals had something going for them. They were seriously using

(04:10):
their brains, and who knows, it's possible they started with
a method similar to one and then moved on to
another overtime. Today's episode was written by Jesscelyn Shields and
produced by Tristan McNeil and Tyler Klang. For more on

(04:31):
this and lots of other sticky topics, is it how
stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of my
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