(June 4, 2023 at 11:38 am)Anomalocaris Wrote:(June 4, 2023 at 6:04 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Neanderthals were manufacturing birch tar (an adhesive resin made from burning birch bark) about 100 000 years before H. sapiens learned the trick.
Boru
That can have something to do with the fact that birch is a temperate and boreal species, ie for 100000 years it grew where Neanderthals were and H Sapiens weren’t.
True enough, but it does help to dispel the popular notion that Neanderthals weren't terribly bright. Even a good few paleonanthropologists were long wedded to the notion that our cousins used fire for only for cooking and heat. That they also used it in a manufacturing process is pretty significant.
Boru
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