{"id":477,"date":"2016-03-10T07:50:19","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T07:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archaeology.sa\/en\/?p=477"},"modified":"2016-03-10T07:50:19","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T07:50:19","slug":"neanderthals-may-have-used-manganese-dioxide-to-light-fires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/?p=477","title":{"rendered":"Neanderthals May Have Used Manganese Dioxide to Light Fires"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Neanderthals\"<\/p>\n

Neanderthals living in what is now France may have used powdered manganese dioxide for fire making purposes, according to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Excavations at Pech-de-l\u2019Az\u00e9 I \u2014 an archaeological site in the Dordogne region of south-western France that was occupied by Neanderthals 50,000 years ago, several millennia before the first evidence for anatomically modern humans in Europe \u2014 and several other Neanderthal sites in France have yielded large numbers of small black \u2018blocs.\u2019<\/p>\n

The usual interpretation is that these chunks of \u2018manganese oxides\u2019 were collected for their coloring properties and used in body decoration, potentially for symbolic expression.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, Neanderthals habitually used fire and if they needed black material for decoration, soot and charcoal were readily available, whereas manganese oxides would have necessitated a considerably higher investment in both time and energy to obtain,\u201d said the study\u2019s lead author Dr. Marie Soressi of Leiden University and co-authors.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/archaeology.sa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Manganese-Dioxide.jpg<\/a><\/p>\n

The researchers argue that Neanderthals at Pech-de-l\u2019Az\u00e9 I used a specific manganese oxide \u2014 manganese dioxide \u2014 in fire-making and produced fire on demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cCombustion experiments and thermo-gravimetric measurements demonstrate that manganese dioxide reduces wood\u2019s auto-ignition temperature and substantially increases the rate of char combustion, leading us to conclude that the most beneficial use for manganese dioxide was in fire-making,\u201d Dr. Soressi and her colleagues said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Pech-de-l\u2019Az\u00e9 I blocs would have had to have been ground to powder for use in facilitating fire lighting and there is archaeological evidence for grinding in the form of a grindstone and abraded blocs,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpark-lit tinder with manganese dioxide powder is one simple yet effective means of starting wood fires with substantially lower wood auto-ignition temperatures and high rate of combustion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neanderthals living in what is now France may have used powdered manganese dioxide for fire making purposes, according to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":478,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":479,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions\/479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}