Ricardo F. Colmenero

Updated Wednesday, February 21, 2024-20:00

Chemist Harry Coover became famous in the 1940s for accidentally inventing

superglue

. His lab ran into this sticky accident again and again, trying to make things to win World War II. Now scientists have just discovered that, without a degree in Chemistry, and

with a much smaller cerebellum

, Neanderthals invented it first.

Hominids started gluing things together more or less in the Middle Pleistocene,

about 200,000 years ago

, using birch bark pitch. And until now it was believed that the first composite adhesive dated back to just 70,000 years ago, when South African homo sapiens began gluing tools using vegetable gum and red ocher. However, his

patent

has just collapsed in an anthropologically resounding way.

European Neanderthals long before made stone tools held together by a multi-component adhesive. A team of scientists has just stumbled upon, almost as accidentally as Coover,

the earliest evidence of a complex adhesive

, which also suggests that these predecessors of modern humans had a higher level of cognition, and cultural development. than was thought.

To know more

Archeology.

A 50,000-year-old tooth allows us to date one of the most important Neanderthal sites in Spain

  • Editor: GERMÁN GONZÁLEZ Barcelona

A 50,000-year-old tooth allows us to date one of the most important Neanderthal sites in Spain

Paleontology.

Sapiens and Neanderthals lived together in northern Europe for longer than previously thought

  • Editor: AMADO HERRERO

Sapiens and Neanderthals lived together in northern Europe for longer than previously thought

The research has just been published by the journal

Science Advances

, and researchers from New York University, the University of Tübingen and the National Museums of Berlin have participated. "These surprisingly well-preserved tools show a technical solution very similar to that of tools made by early modern humans in Africa, but the exact recipe reflects a Neanderthal turn, which is the production of handles for hand tools," says Radu Iovita, associate professor at the Center for the Study of Human Origins at New York University.

The team, led by Patrick Schmidt from the Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology section at the University of Tübingen, and Ewa Dutkiewicz from the Museum of Prehistory and Early History at the National Museums Berlin, re-examined previous finds at

Le Moustier, an archaeological site from France that was discovered at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Le Moustier stone tools, used by Neanderthals during the Middle Paleolithic Mousterians

, between 120,000 and 40,000 years ago

, are preserved in the collection of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin and had not previously been examined in detail. “They were individually wrapped and intact from the 1960s, so the organic substances were very well preserved,” says Dutkiewicz.

Liquid bitumen and ocher before mixing to make glue.Patrick SchmidtWORLD

There were traces of a mixture of ocher and bitumen on various stone tools, such as

scrapers, flakes and blades.

Ocher is a natural earth pigment, and bitumen is a component of asphalt that can be produced from crude oil, but also occurs naturally in soil.

The mixture was sticky enough for a stone tool to stay stuck in it, but not stick to hands, making

it a suitable material for a handle

. In fact, a microscopic examination of the wear marks on these tools revealed that they were used in this way.

The development of adhesives is considered one of the best evidence of cultural evolution, and of the cognitive abilities of early humans. In the Le Moustier region, ocher and bitumen had to be collected from distant places, which required a lot of effort, planning and a specific approach, the authors note. "What our study shows is that early Homo sapiens in Africa and Neanderthals in Europe had similar thinking patterns," adds Schmidt. "Their adhesive technologies are equally important to our understanding of human evolution."