Station: [136] Birch Tar

This, at least 110,000 year-old technical innovation, looks like a shiny black piece of chewing gum.  You’re looking at birch tar, the oldest form of glue in human history. Black tar was extracted from birch bark in a distillation process under an inert low oxygen atmosphere.

It was used to glue stone tools and materials and for example, to attach Levallois tips to spear handles that were then additionally bound with animal tendons.