The First Complex Structure for the Extraction of Tar was Made by Neanderthals in Vanguard Cave, Gibraltar, 60,000 Years Ago

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2024-11-23 01:00:15

A scientific study, published today in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, has described for the first time, a structure which was used by Neanderthals in Gibraltar, 60,000 years ago. This structure, in the form of a pit dug into the ground at Vanguard Cave, would have been used to extract plant resins. The results are highly significant in that they reveal complex levels of cognition in Neanderthals, indicating that they understood the plants that they needed to select and the complex industrial process required in order to manufacture tar.

Neanderthals utilized tar obtained from woody plants as an adhesive for the hafting of stone points onto wooden shafts, making spears for use in ambush - hunting prey. Until now, how they actually obtained the tar necessary for hafting was unknown. Theoretical studies had proposed two methods by which this tar could have been made. One method was simple and of low productivity: it involved the combustion, in the open air, of birch bark. A second, more complex, method would have needed the anoxic heating of fragments of woody plants, such as birch. This second method required that fragments of woody plants would have been buried and heated with fire, isolated from oxygen, so that they would exude resin without the wood catching fire. Which of the two methods was used had great implications regarding the Neanderthals’ cognitive capacities, as the more complex method required a high level of organization and practice.

The results of the present study support theoretical predictions regarding the use of the anoxic heating method. The structure that was discovered in Vanguard Cave resembles a simple hollow in the cave sediment and its simplicity may explain why such structures may not have been recognised in the past. It is only now, after a wide range of analyses involving the collaboration of an interdisciplinary team, that it has been possible to show the pit’s use as a chamber for anoxic heating.

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