Birch tar, the first synthetic material
Neanderthals distil glue from bark in an oxygen-free process that cannot happen by accident.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 71 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 30 thousand years
- Era
- Middle Pleistocene, Quaternary
Lumps of birch bark tar with tool and finger impressions have been recovered from Middle Pleistocene sites in Italy and Germany. Producing it requires heating bark to around 340 degrees while excluding oxygen — a controlled, multi-step transformation of one material into another with different properties. Experimental work shows several possible methods, all of them deliberate. It is arguably the earliest synthetic substance made by any human species.