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As Homo sapiens , we often consider ourselves to be the most intelligent hominins. But that doesn’t mean our species was the first to discover everything; it appears that Neanderthals found a way to manufacture synthetics long before we ever did.

Neanderthal tools might look relatively simple, but new research shows that Homo neanderthalensis devised a method of generating a glue derived from birch tar to hold them together about  200,000 years ago—and it was tough. This ancient superglue made bone and stone adhere to wood, was waterproof, and didn’t decompose. The tar was also used a hundred thousand years before modern humans came up with anything synthetic.

A transformation

After studying ancient tools that carry residue from this glue, a team of researchers from the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and other institutions in Germany found evidence that this glue wasn’t just the original tar; it had been transformed in some way. This raises the question of what was involved in that transformation.

Enlarge / An Egyptian drinking vessel in the shape of Bes head contained traces of Syrian rue and blue water lily, among other compounds. (credit: Tampa Museum of Art, Florida)

An ancient Egyptian vase in the shape of the deity Bes showed traces of chemical plant compounds known to produce hallucinations, according to a recent preprint posted to Research Square. The authors suggest that members of the cult of Bes may have consumed a special cocktail containing the compounds to induce altered states of consciousness.

There is ample evidence that humans in many cultures throughout history used various hallucinogenic substances in religious ceremonies or shamanic rituals. That includes not just ancient Egypt but also ancient Greek, Vedic, Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures. The Urarina people who live in the Peruvian Amazon Basin still use a psychoactive brew called ayahuasca in their rituals, and Westerners seeking their own brand of enlightenment have also been known to participate.

Lacing the beer served at their feasts with hallucinogens may have helped an ancient Peruvian people known as the Wari forge political alliances and expand their empire, according to a 2022 study . As previously reported , the use of hallucinogens, particularly a substance derived from the seeds of the vilca tree, was common in the region during the so-called Middle Horizon period, when the Wari empire thrived.

Enlarge / Exploration team members Megan Berger and Rick Hunter navigate the narrow chutes leading to the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star cave in South Africa, where fossil elements belonging to Homo naledi were discovered. (credit: Robert Clark/National Geographic)

Some 25 miles outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, there is a famous paleoanthropological site known as the Cradle of Humankind . So many hominin bones were found in the region that it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999. Among the many limestone caves in the region is the Rising Star cave , where cavers discovered fossils representing a new hominin species, Homo naledi , in 2015. Only H. naledi remains were found in the cave, suggesting the possibility that the bodies had been placed there deliberately, although this hypothesis proved to be a bit controversial .

Now the same expedition team has announced the discovery of H. naledi bodies deposited in fetal positions, indicating intentional burials. This predates the earliest known burials by Homo sapiens by at least 100,000 years, suggesting that brain size might not be the definitive factor behind such complex behavior. The team also found crosshatched symbols engraved on the walls of the cave that could date as far back as 241,000–335,000 years, although testing is still ongoing.

Taken together, the discoveries provide evidence of a major cognitive step in human evolution in terms of mortuary practices and meaning-making. The team described these new findings during a virtual press conference and in three new preprints posted to the BioRxiv, which will be published later this year in the journal eLife.

Enlarge / María Medina of the University of Cordoba working in the Navarro Cave, Malaga, Spain. (credit: University of Cordoba)

For over a decade, Maria Medina, an archaeologist affiliated with the University of Cordoba, has been conducting research on what she terms "smoke archaeology": trying to reconstruct Europe's prehistoric past by analyzing the remnants of torches, fire, and smoke in French and Spanish caves. Her latest discovery is that humans regularly visited the Caves of Nerja as far back as 41,000 years ago, a good 10,000 years earlier than previously believed, according to a recent paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.

As we've reported previously , there are nearly 350 prehistoric caves in France and Spain alone, and they include the oldest cave painting yet known: a red hand stencil in Maltravieso Cave in Caceres, Spain, likely drawn by a Neanderthal some 64,000 years ago. The Caves of Nerja are located in Malaga, Spain, and boast their own paintings believed to date back 42,000 years.

The caves were discovered in 1959 by a group of five friends who gained access via a narrow sinkhole dubbed "La Mina"—one of two natural entrances, with a third created the following year to enable better access for tourists.

Enlarge / Bent nails scattered around early Roman imperial burial site suggest an attempt to keep the deceased from rising. (credit: Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project)

Archaeologists excavating an early Roman imperial tomb in Turkey have uncovered evidence of unusual funerary practices. Instead of the typical method of being cremated on a funeral pyre and the remains relocated to a final resting place, these burnt remains had been left in place and covered in brick tiles and a layer of lime. Finally, several dozen bent and twisted nails, some with the heads pinched off, had been scattered around the burn site. The archaeologists suggest that this is evidence of magical thinking, specifically an attempt to prevent the deceased from rising from the grave to haunt the living, according to a recent paper published in the journal Antiquity.

Perhaps the best known examples of this kind of superstitious funerary practice are the so-called "vampire" burials that occasionally pop up at archaeological sites around the world. In the early 1990s, children playing in Connecticut stumbled upon the 19th-century remains of a middle-aged man identified only by the initials "JB55," spelled out in brass tacks on his coffin. His skull and femurs were neatly arranged in the shape of a skull and crossbones, leading archaeologists to conclude that the man had been a suspected "vampire" by his community. They have since found a likely identification for JB55 and reconstructed what the man may have looked like.

In 2018, archaeologists discovered the skeleton of a 10-year-old child at an ancient Roman site in Italy with a rock carefully placed in its mouth. This suggests those who buried the child—who probably died of malaria during a deadly 5th-century outbreak—feared it might rise from the dead and spread the disease to those who survived. Locals are calling it the "Vampire of Lugnano." And last year , archaeologists uncovered an unusual example of people using these tips in a 17th-century Polish cemetery near Bydgoszcz: a female skeleton buried with a sickle placed across her neck, as well as a padlock on the big toe of her left foot.

Enlarge / This phallus-shaped object went viral last month, but it might not be an ancient Roman dildo after all. (credit: Vindolanda Trust)

Odds are good you read at least one of the umpteen media stories last month about a possible 2,000-year-old "dildo" unearthed near the remains of a Roman auxiliary fort in the UK called Vindolanda. Well, it's either a dildo; a pestle used for grinding cooking, cosmetic, or medicinal ingredients; or something meant to be inserted into a statue and rubbed for good fortune (a common Roman practice). That's what the authors of a February paper in Antiquity concluded, anyway. But now we have another possible explanation to consider: The phallus-shaped artifact might be a drop spindle used for spinning yarn.

As we've reported previously , the Vindolanda site is located south of the defense fortification known as Hadrian's Wall . An antiquarian named William Camden recorded the existence of the ruins in a 1586 treatise. Over the next 200 years, many people visited the site, discovering a military bathhouse in 1702 and an altar in 1715. The Rev. Anthony Hedley began excavating the site in 1814, but he died before he could record what he found for posterity. Another altar found in 1914 confirmed that the fort had been called Vindolanda.

Serious archaeological excavation at the site began in the 1930s under the leadership of Eric Birley , whose sons and grandson continued the work after his death, right up to the present day. The oxygen-deprived conditions of the deposits (some of which extend 6 meters, or 19 feet, into the earth) mean that the recovered artifacts are remarkably well-preserved. These include wooden writing tablets and over 100 boxwood combs, which would have disintegrated long ago in more oxygen-rich conditions.

Enlarge / This artist's conception shows how Neanderthals might have faced down the mammoth task of butchering a freshly-killed elephant. (credit: Benoit Clarys, courtesy of Schoeningen Project)

Two recent studies of Neanderthal archaeological sites (one on the coast of Portugal and one in central Germany) demonstrate yet again that our extinct cousins were smarter and more adaptable than we’ve often given them credit for. One study found that Neanderthals living on the coast of Portugal 90,000 years ago roasted brown crabs—a meal that’s still a delicacy on the Iberian coast today. The other showed that 125,000 years ago, large groups of Neanderthals came together to take down enormous Ice Age elephants in what’s now central Germany.

Individually, both discoveries are fascinating glimpses into the lives of a species that's hauntingly similar to our own. But to really understand the most important thing these Neanderthal diet discoveries tell us, we have to look at them together. Together, they show that Neanderthals in different parts of Europe had distinct cultures and ways of life—at least as diverse as the cultures that now occupy the same lands.

Neanderthal beach party

On the Iberian coast 90,000 years ago, groups of Neanderthals living in the Gruta de Figueira Brava cave spent their summers catching brown crabs in tide pools along the nearby shore, then feasting on crab roasted over hot coals back in the cave.

Enlarge / 3D rendered image of the micro-CT scan of a tsantsa , or shrunken head. (credit: Andrew Nelson, CC-BY 4.0)

There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we're once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2020, each day from December 25 through January 5. Today: Sophisticated imaging methods can be used to authenticate whether the shrunken heads ( tsantsas ) in museum collections are genuine.

In Tim Burton's 1993 animated feature The Nightmare Before Christmas , there's scene where a little boy receives a shrunken head as a Christmas gift from Jack Skellington. It does not go over well, with either the boy or his parents. But there was a time in the early 20th century when these macabre objects were in such great demand by Western collectors that it triggered a lucrative market for counterfeits. Many museums around the world count shrunken heads (known as tsantsas by the Shuar people ) among their collections, but how can curators determine if those items are authentic? Certain sophisticated imaging methods can help, according to an August paper published in the journal PLoS One.

The practice of headhunting and making shrunken heads has mostly been documented in northwestern parts of the Amazon rainforest, as well as among certain tribes in Ecuador and Peru, like the Shuar. Accounts conflict on the specific details of the manufacturing process. But the tsantsas were typically created by removing the skin and flesh from the skull's cranium via an incision on the back of the ear, and then discarding the skull. The nostrils were packed with red seeds and the lips sewn shut. Next, the skin was boiled in water saturated with tannin-rich herbs for 15 minutes to two hours, so that the fat and grease would float to the top. This also caused the skin to contract and thicken. Then the head was dried with hot rocks and molded back into something resembling human features and the eyes were sewn shut. As a final touch the skin was rubbed with charcoal ash—apparently to keep the avenging soul from escaping—and sometimes beads, feathers, or other adornments were added for decoration.

Enlarge / The mummified corpse of Ötzi the Iceman, discovered in 1991. (credit: Leopold Nekula/Sygma/Getty Images)

In 1991, a group of hikers found the mummified remains of Ötzi the Iceman emerging from a melting glacier. The popular interpretation—given the extraordinary preservation of the body—is that Ötzi fled from the valley after being attacked and froze to death in the gully where his mummified remains were found. His body and the tools he brought with him were quickly buried beneath the ice and remained frozen under a moving glacier for the next 5,300 years. The gully served as a kind of time capsule, protecting the remains from damage by the glacier.

But a new paper published in the journal The Holocene challenges that interpretation, suggesting that the Ötzi died elsewhere on the mountain and that normal environmental changes gradually moved his remains down into the gully. Further, for the first 1,500 years after his death, Ötzi's remains likely thawed and refroze at least once and quite possibly several times. That means it's much more likely that another ice mummy will be discovered, since no extraordinary circumstances are required to explain Ötzi's preservation.

Archaeologists have spent the last 30 years studying the wealth of information about Copper Age life that Ötzi brought with him into the present. Studies have examined his genome, hskeleton, last meals, tattoos, and the microbes that lived in his gut. For instance, in 2016, scientists used DNA sequencing to identify how Ötzi's clothing was made and found that most of it was made from domesticated cattle, goats, and sheep, although his hat was made from brown bear hide and his quiver from a wild roe deer.