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Birch tar is one of the oldest synthetic materials made by early humans. It was used for example to glue stone tools to shafts.The earliest evidence for birch tar is associated with Neanderthals. It can be produced in a complicated, multi-stage smoldering process in a pit. However, birch tar can also be made easily and quickly using a campfire. Therefore, the significance of the birch tar finds for our understanding of the Neanderthals was previously unclear. Mastery of such a process would be evidence of sophisticated cognitive abilities of Neanderthals. New studies on up to 80,000-year-old birch tar finds from Königsaue now provide evidence of such a complex production process.
Birch tar is one of the oldest synthetic materials made by early humans. It was used as an adhesive, for example to attach stone tools to wooden shafts. The earliest evidence is associated with Neanderthals. The exact process of making birch tar is still discussed. Essential insights into the cultural abilities of Neanderthals depend on the question of the complexity of the production steps.
Birch tar and the cognitive abilities of Neanderthals
Birch tar can be produced in a complicated, multi-stage smoldering process in a pit in low oxygen conditions. Mastery of such a process would be evidence of the extensive cognitive abilities of Neanderthals. However, experiments have shown that birch tar can also condense on stones from burning bark. If this process could be proven in prehistoric finds, a key argument for sophisticated cognitive abilities of Neanderthals would be lost.
To clarify this question, a team of scientists from the University of Tübingen, the University of Strasbourg and the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt, headed by Patrick Schmidt, has chemically analyzed two key finds related to the early production of birch tar from the well-known site of Königsaue (district of Aschersleben-Staßfurt, Germany) and compared the results with samples produced experimentally by different methods.
The Königsaue site
In Königsaue near Aschersleben in Saxony-Anhalt, archaeological find layers uncovered in 1963-1964 through open pit soft coal mining. Traces of several seasonal hunting camps of Neanderthals located at the shores of a former lake could be observed, the oldest layers of finds date from around 80,000 years BP. Among the finds were two initially inconspicuous pieces of birch tar. One of the two pieces was known from earlier research to bear imprints of wood and a stone tool as well as a preserved fingerprint of a Neanderthal. It is part of the permanent exhibition of the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle (Saale).
Evidence of a complex manufacturing process
The researchers examined the finds by infrared spectroscopy, gas chromatography and created CT images. They compared the results with studies on experimentally produced birch tar. The result is clear: the birch tar from Königsaue is the result of an elaborate technological process that involved smoldering in a low-oxygen environment. The mastery of this technology not only indicates considerable cognitive abilities of the Neanderthals, it can also be assumed that our early relatives were able to preserve knowledge of such processes and pass it on to subsequent generations.
PD Dr. Patrick Schmidt, Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; patrick.schmidt@uni-tuebingen.de
Schmidt, P., Koch, T. J., Blessing, M. A., Karakostis, F. A., Harvati, K., Dresely, V., & Charrié-Duhaut, A. (2023). Production method of the Königsaue birch tar documents cumulative culture in Neanderthals. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 15(6), 84. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-023-01789-2
Birch tar lump from Königsaue. The imprints of a stone and of a piece of wood stand out in the tar; ...
J. Lipták
(© State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt. photo J. Lipták
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