A primitive Neandertal glue used to make tools may also have been a go-to antibiotic for the hominids. A new study of the sticky substance, published March 18 in PLOS One, raises the possibility that it could have been used to treat wounds and prevent skin infection, such as those caused by Staphylococcus aureus.
Neandertals burned birch bark to create a tar that they used to attach stones to weapons and other tools, says Tjaark Siemssen, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford. In more modern human cultures, birch tar is used medicinally. Indigenous peoples in the Arctic incorporate it into wound dressings, and the Mi’kmaq, or L’nuk, peoples