Neanderthal Superglue
- Posted 01.10.13
- NOVA
Neanderthals devised what is thought to be the world’s first known industrial process. In this video, watch as NOVA attempts to recreate the Neanderthal technique of pitch extraction through a complex process known as dry distillation.
Transcript
Decoding Neanderthals
PBS Airdate: January 9, 2013
NARRATOR: This is the world's oldest-known synthetic material. It makes Neanderthals, and not us, the inventors of perhaps the first industrial process. But how could an allegedly primitive species have done this?
To find out more, Wil Roebroeks decides to mount an experiment with a colleague, Friedrich Palmer. They will try to replicate the Neanderthal technique of pitch extraction, a complex process called "dry distillation."
Crucially, they'll use only the materials available to Neanderthals 250,000 years ago: an upturned animal skull to catch the pitch; a small stone on which the pitch would condense; some rolls of birch bark, the source of the pitch; and a layer of ash to exclude oxygen and prevent the bark from burning.
Roebroeks and Palmer need to heat the bark to 400 degrees centigrade. Any less, and it won't produce pitch; any more, and it will simply burn.
After eight hours, any pitch should have condensed on the stone within the skull. Today, Roebroeks and Palmer manage to extract only a tiny smear of pitch. They are on the right track, but it isn't nearly enough to glue a spearhead to a shaft, as the Neanderthals did.
FRIEDRICH PALMER: It's sticky.
WIL ROEBROEKS: It's not much. It's very small quantities.
NARRATOR: It seems this experiment is on too small a scale to produce enough pitch. Neanderthals must have figured out how to scale up the technique in a way we haven't yet reproduced.
However they managed it, the Neanderthals had evidently mastered a complex thermal process.
Credits
- EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
- Alison Turner
Tom Brisley - DIRECTED BY
- Nick Clarke Powell
- PRODUCED BY
- Johanna Woolford Gibbon
Ben Harding - CONSULTANT
- Matthew Barrett
- EDITED BY
- Sebastian Duthy
- CAMERA
- Chris Openshaw
Richard Numeroff - SOUND RECORDISTS
- Steve Theroux
Steve Roseboom
Hayden Jackson
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- Dave Prevost
- MUSIC
- David Hamill
Audio Network
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- Stephanie Mavropoulos
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- Chris Clark
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- Sarah Kinsella
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Didier Descouens, Museum of Toulouse
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Max Planck Institute
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- Paula S. Apsell
A NOVA Production by Arrow International Media Ltd. for WGBH
© 2013 WGBH Educational Foundation
All rights reserved
Image
- (Neanderthal holding pitch)
- © WGBH Educational Foundation
Participants
- Svante Pääbo
- Max Planck Institute, Leipzig
- Wil Roebroeks
- Archaeologist, Leiden University
Related Links
-
Decoding Neanderthals
Shared DNA reveals a deep connection with our long-vanished human cousins.
-
Are Neanderthals Human?
Neanderthals present a conundrum well known in biology: What exactly is a species?
-
Neanderthals: Expert Q&A
The leader of the team that proved we share DNA with Neanderthals answered questions about our closest relatives.
-
A Neanderthal Burial
Scientists think a posed body alongside a panther paw are evidence of Neanderthal rites.
