[language] [Fwd: [evol-psych] Neanderthals clever enough to make 'superglue']

[H.M. Hubey]

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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [evol-psych] Neanderthals clever enough to make 'superglue'
Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2002 07:13:41 +0000
From: Ian Pitchford <ian.pitchford at scientist.com>
Reply-To: Ian Pitchford <ian.pitchford at scientist.com>
Organization: http://human-nature.com/
To: evolutionary-psychology at yahoogroups.com

Neanderthals clever enough to make 'superglue'

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.''

Story filed: 12:45 Sunday 6th January 2002
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_488461.html?menu=news.scienceanddiscovery

_____

Independent
Neanderthals were a lot more intelligent than they looked
By Roger Dobson
06 January 2002

Neanderthals were not dumb, lumbering idiots after all. New evidence
suggests
that they had considerable technical and intellectual skills, as well as
ingenuity, to put them on a par with modern humans.

A team of archaeologists and scientists has discovered that
Neanderthals,
thought to have first appeared around 230,000 to 300,000 years ago, were
capable of a sophisticated tool manufacturing process using prehistoric
superglue that had to be made at a precise temperature.

Full text
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=113056




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