Archaeologists say they have discovered a new type of Neanderthal hearth at Vanguard Cave, Gibraltar. This hearth structure coincides with predictions from theoretical studies which require the use of heating structures for obtaining birch tar, commonly used in hafting. The researchers propose that the hearth was used for heating rockroses under anoxic conditions by burning herbs and shrubs, over a guano mixed with sand layer.
The Neanderthal hearth structure could have been made following these steps. Image credit: Ochando et al., doi: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2024.109025.
“Fire use and control would have provided crucial adaptive advantages to Homo, even have shaped its evolution,” said Gibraltar National Museum Clive Finlayson and colleagues.
“Manufacturing fire technology has been shown common ever since 400,000 years ago to present and most likely, it happened long before.”
“The ability to make, conserve, and transport fires by Neanderthals has been highlighted by different studies.”
“The main functions for the use of fire have been related to provide heat, light and the possibility of cooking food.”
“However, it can also be connected to the development of new technological innovations,” they added.
“These may include intentional heat treatment of stone artifacts, enduring wood, smoking purposes and the production of multicomponent tools, hafting stone flakes in wooden elements, with the use of adhesives from birch bark distillation and conifer resin.”
“Other technological innovations attributed to Neanderthals are the construction of pits and the diversification of the fuel types used with different commonly used plants, liquid hydrocarbons and lignites.”
“Plants are, however, the most common type of fuel and it is therefore expected they have been subject to selection processes by Neanderthals among the available resources in the landscape, in the vicinity or perhaps beyond.”
The specialized burning structure discovered by the team at Vanguard Cave reveals a previously unknown way by which Neanderthals managed and used fire.
The structure is between 68,000 and 61,000 years old and is compatible with essential oils steam distillation from rockroses for obtaining tar, a hafting substance that was proved to be used by Neanderthals.
The researchers experimentally tested their interpretation by building a structure with morphological and compositional features analogous to the one excavated in the cave.
Distilling a small bunch of young leaves of rockrose for a reasonable period of time in a closed and almost anoxic environment enabled to produce tar that was more than enough to haft two spearheads, using only tools and materials available in the area.
“Neanderthals had to go through a series of thought processes, choosing which plants to select and figuring out how to extract resin without burning them,” Dr. Finlayson said.
“Our extinct cousins were not the brutalized humans of popular imagination,” said Dr. Fernando Muñiz, an archaeologist at the University of Seville.
“This human species has been shown to have cognitive abilities, as reflected in research showing mastery of industrial processes for making resin as an adhesive to attach stone points to spear handles.”
The discovery is reported in a paper in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
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Juan Ochando et al. 2024. A Neanderthal’s specialised burning structure compatible with tar obtention. Quaternary Science Reviews 346: 109025; doi: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2024.109025
