Stone to Silicon

Materials · c. 202,000 years ago

Birch tar adhesive

The first synthetic material, cooked from birch bark to glue tools.

Neanderthals in Italy made birch tar by about 200,000 years ago by heating bark without much oxygen. It was used to fix stone points into handles.

See it in the living treeWikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

World population over a million years Latest: 6.27k million people (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, table 'Total World Population' (Kremer series); Kremer 1993, Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990, QJE 108(3)