What did Neolithic people use beeswax for?
Short answerNot settled
Nobody knows, and the honest answer is a list of possibilities. Beeswax is found absorbed into Neolithic pottery across a wide area, which proves contact with the material and not its purpose. Waterproofing vessels and cordage is the use most consistent with finding wax inside pots; adhesive, food and medicine are all plausible and none is demonstrated.
How widespread it was
A survey of several thousand Neolithic potsherds found beeswax across Europe, the Near East and North Africa, with the earliest secure occurrences in Anatolia. The signal stops above a certain latitude, and the boundary corresponds closely to the ecological limit of the honey bee at the time — which is a genuine result about bees rather than a gap in the sampling.
The candidate uses
- Waterproofing and sealing porous vessels, cordage and containers, which fits the context best.
- Adhesive, mixed with plant resin, which is attested far earlier on a southern African artefact.
- Food, eaten with the comb and honey rather than separated from it.
- Medicine or cosmetics, well attested in later literate societies and unprovable here.
Sources
- Widespread exploitation of the honeybee by early Neolithic farmers — Nature (2015) · Peer-reviewed article
- Early evidence of San material culture represented by organic artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2012) · Peer-reviewed article
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.