Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren voc Obam here with another classic episode
Speaker 1: from our previous host, Christian Sagar. There was a time
Speaker 1: when Neanderthal was used as an insult, with the implication
Speaker 1: that this extinct species or perhaps subspecies of hominids, was
Speaker 1: unintelligent and unsophisticated. But the more research that goes into
Speaker 1: how Neanderthal's lived, the more we learn that they were
Speaker 1: quite clever. For example, they made and used glue millennia
Speaker 1: before we humans figured it out. Hey brain Stuff is
Speaker 1: Christian Sagar here. There are some things people just can't
Speaker 1: live without, so we invented them way before we ever
Speaker 1: invented writing, coats, knives, roofs. Fire. Turns out, another thing
Speaker 1: are prehistoric precursors needed that we still need today is
Speaker 1: the ability to stick one thing to another thing and
Speaker 1: then you know, have them stay that way, which is
Speaker 1: why Neanderthals had glue. They might have been cavemen, but
Speaker 1: they weren't savages. Now Homo neanderthal insists used their glue,
Speaker 1: a viscous tar distilled from birch bark, to fix weapons
Speaker 1: on the heads of a tool onto a halft or
Speaker 1: maybe a handle, and Neanderthals were actually the leaders in
Speaker 1: glue technology, beating US Homo sapiens to the punch by
Speaker 1: more than a hundred thousand years. They began brewing tar
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand years ago, whereas the earliest evidence of
Speaker 1: modern humans using tree resin as adhesive appears less than
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand years ago. Research published in twenty eleven
Speaker 1: shows that Neanderthals had the ability to create and control fire.
Speaker 1: So does the fact Neanderthals could manipulate fire to produce
Speaker 1: tar prove they weren't as dimwitted as we like to assume.
Speaker 1: Scientists have been curious about the process Neanderthal is used
Speaker 1: to make their glue. A new study published in the
Speaker 1: journal Nature Scientific Reports suggests three different ways Neanderthal tar
Speaker 1: could have been manufactured. After all, it had to be produced.
Speaker 1: This stuff wasn't just secreted from trees growing in the forest.
Speaker 1: But how difficult was making tar? Tar making is definitely
Speaker 1: a process no matter which way you go about it.
Speaker 1: The research team figured that out through a fancy bit
Speaker 1: of experimental archaeology. They devised three different potential methods of
Speaker 1: extracting sticky stuff from birch bark, the ash mound method,
Speaker 1: where tightly rolled layers of birch bark are covered in
Speaker 1: ash and embers, the pit roll cigar roll method, where
Speaker 1: one end of a birch roll is lit and placed
Speaker 1: burning side down into a small collection pit, and the
Speaker 1: raised structure method, where a birch bark container was placed
Speaker 1: in a pit beneath an organic mesh which holds loosely
Speaker 1: rolled bark that is then covered with earth and fire.
Speaker 1: After recreating the three tar production methods, the scientists assessed
Speaker 1: each according to three criteria the yield, temperature, and complexity.
Speaker 1: The team found that though the simplest fastest method, the
Speaker 1: ash mound method, yielded just a peace sized amount of tar,
Speaker 1: the most complicated, time consuming method, that's the raised structure method,
Speaker 1: produced fifteen to twenty times more and was also the
Speaker 1: most efficient. They also observed that regulating the temperature of
Speaker 1: the fire didn't make much of a difference to the product.
Speaker 1: Even though they have no evidence that the Neanderthal way
Speaker 1: of making tar was similar to any of their experimental methods,
Speaker 1: making the connection between the birch bark, the fire, and
Speaker 1: the tar would have required that Neanderthals possess a proclivity
Speaker 1: for abstract thought, so whether they were making easy, inefficient
Speaker 1: tar instead of something like the high yield method requiring
Speaker 1: a folded cup and a little grill made of sticks,
Speaker 1: Neanderthals had something going for them. They were seriously using
Speaker 1: their brains, and who knows, it's possible they started with
Speaker 1: a method similar to one and then moved on to
Speaker 1: another overtime. Today's episode was written by Jesscelyn Shields and
Speaker 1: produced by Tristan McNeil and Tyler Klang. For more on
Speaker 1: this and lots of other sticky topics, is it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of my
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