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Researchers say Neanderthals had considerable technical and intellectual
skills and were as ingenious as modern humans.
German scientists say they have found Neanderthals mixed a kind
of superglue to make tools.
It had to be made at a precise temperature and means the race had
considerable technical and manual skills in comparison to their
dullard image.
Neanderthals are thought to have first appeared around 230,000
to 300,000 years ago.
Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural
History Museum in London, said the discovery is potentially very
important: "It would further show that the behaviour gap between
us and Neanderthals is narrower than we thought. Some may say there
isn't a gap."
Independent reports that the research centres on a new analysis
of two 80,000-year-old samples of blackish-brown pitch discovered
in a lignite mining pit in the Harz mountains in Germany.
One of the pitch pieces bears the print of a finger and there are
also imprints of a flint stone tool and wood, suggesting the pitch
had served as a sort of glue to secure a wooden shaft to a flint
stone blade.
The research, carried out at the Doerner-Institut in Munich, found
the pitch was a birch pitch, which can be only be produced at temperatures
of 300-400C.
The team, led by Professor Dietrich Mania of Freidrich-Schiller
University in Jena, said: "This implies the Neanderthals did
not come across these pitches by accident but must have produced
them with intent."
"The pitch finds demonstrate that the Neanderthals must have
possessed a high degree of technical and manual abilities, comparable
to those of modern Homo sapiens.''
Posted 10th January 2002
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