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.
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