Neanderthal Glue and Civilization

So, Neanderthals glued tools together. This might seem like a simple thing, but the fact is?

Glue's not easy to make.

The specific glue they used was birch tar. Birch trees would likely have been common in Ice Age Europe, much as they are today in the upper Midwest, Scandinavia and parts of the UK.

And the thing is:

They were using this glue on relatively simple tools. Which means they were producing it in quantity. Producing it in quantity requires heating it to about 350F, which may be familiar as a common temperature for baking meat in a modern oven.

They likely did this by heating the bark in a clay vessel buried under earth, a primitive form of oven.

We tend to assume that Neanderthals were primitive. But these discoveries may indicate that far from being less advanced than anatomically modern humans...

Put it this way, the Neanderthals disappeared about 40,000 years ago.

The oldest pottery yet found was 20,000 years old, in China.

But if the Neanderthals were making clay ovens, then they had pottery. Maybe it was an accident the first time, heavy soil being heated and them discovering it fused.

They were at least as advanced as anatomically modern men at the time and may have been more so. Likely, this was due to their harsher environment driving technological innovation faster.

We already know that people don't invent things they don't need. A harsh or changing environment pushes innovation.

(Now, technologically superior doesn't mean superior in any other ways. But it does mean they were smart. And how much did we learn from them?)