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Stone Age Superglue Found -- Hints at Unknown Smarts? National Geographic - May 12, 2009
Stone Age humans were adept chemists who whipped up a sophisticated kind of natural glue, a new study says. They knowingly tweaked the chemical and physical properties of an iron-containing pigment known as red ochre with the gum of acacia trees to create adhesives for their shafted tools.
Archaeologists had believed the blood-red pigment - used by people in what is now South Africa about 70,000 years ago - served a decorative or symbolic purpose. But the scientists had also suspected that the pigment may have been purposely added to improve glue that held the peoples' tools together. So researchers recreated the ancient glue using only Stone Age materials and technologies.
The results showed that glue containing red ochre was less brittle and more shatterproof than glue made from acacia gum alone. But making the glue wasn't easy for the ancient Africans. It was mentally taxing work that would have required humans to account for differences in the chemistry of gum harvested from different trees and in the iron content of ochre from different sites. The finding also suggests the intelligence of Stone Age humans was more akin to that of modern humans than previously thought.
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