Tools with handles even more ancient

Science News ^ | Friday, December 12th, 2008 | Bruce Bower

[SunkenCiv]

In a gripping instance of Stone Age survival, Neandertals used a tarlike substance to fasten sharpened stones to handles as early as 70,000 years ago, a new study suggests. Stone points and sharpened flakes unearthed in Syria since 2000 contain the residue of bitumen -- a natural, adhesive substance -- on spots where the implements would have been secured to handles of some type, according to a team led by archaeologist Eric Boëda of University of Paris X, Nanterre. The process of attaching a tool to a handle is known as hafting. The Neandertals likely found the bitumen in nearby tar sands, the team reports... The new age of 70,000 years ago places the practice earlier than a previous finding in 1996 by Boëda's team of 40,000-year-old stone artifacts unearthed at the same location, Umm el Tlel. Those artifacts also contained remnants of bitumen (SN: 4/13/96, p. 235)... Following an analysis of microscopic wear on 90,000-year-old stone artifacts from an early Homo sapiens site in Israel, Shea reported in 2007 that some stone points had probably been attached to hand-cast spears with an unidentified adhesive. Also in 2007, archaeologist Marlize Lombard of Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, reported that modern humans living in southern Africa around 60,000 years ago hafted stone points using an adhesive made from a mix of resin and ground pigment. In 2006, Italian researchers found two sharpened stones, dating to more than 100,000 years ago, that Neandertals had apparently attached to handles using birch-bark tar. The tar-stained stones lay among the bones of an animal that belonged to a now-extinct elephant species.

[SunkenCiv]

• Neanderthals used glue to make stone tools 40,000 years ago, a new study suggests "Earliest evidence of a multi-component adhesive in Europe" [02/22/2024]
• Neanderthals used resin 'glue' to craft their stone tools [07/01/2019]