
Selection and Use of Manganese Dioxide by Neanderthals - diodorus
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22159
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tantalor
Article uses the term _bloc_ 60+ times without ever defining it other than to
say it is small and black.

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imglorp
tldr: The report suggests they used powdered MnO2 to make fire starting
easier.

The Wikipedia entry for MnO2 already references this article :-)

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zelcon5
More proof that Neanderthals were as smart as, if not smarter than, _Homo
sapiens sapiens_.

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lqdc13
How is this proof of that? They just found something that worked through trial
and error.

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EdwardDiego
As opposed to... what we do?

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a_imho
Build a model, predict a particle and verify its existence?

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norea-armozel
That's a relatively recent development in terms of systemizing knowledge
discovery. Prior, people literally just mixed stuff together to see what
happened.

