Work

The Zandmotor data do not resolve the question whether Middle Paleolithic birch tar making was complex or not

Year: 2020

Type: letter

Abstract: Niekus et al. (1) present a find of Neanderthal birch tar from Zandmotor (The Netherlands), concluding that a cognitively complex underground production method was used. However, Schmidt et al. (2) recently showed that birch tar production can be simple [burning bark near stones: the condensation method (2)]. Two arguments are used by Niekus et al. (1) to claim that the Zandmotor tar was produced with a complex method: The efficiency of simpler techniques was too low, and their tar’s composition indicates a complex technique. As we will argue, these arguments are invalid. Producing 0.6 g of tar took 3 h with the condensation method (2), leading Niekus et al. … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: patrick.schmidt{at}uni-tuebingen.de. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1919564117

Authors: Patrick Schmidt, Maxime Rageot, Matthias Blessing, Claudio Tennie

Institutions: University of Tübingen, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Language: English

Topic: Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology

Subfield: Anthropology

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, FP7 Ideas: European Research Council

Awards: G3564809165, G548003424

OpenAlex ID: W3006670554

Cites: 5

Cited by: 9

Related to: 10