From National Geographic:
Ancient people in what is now South Africa whipped up a glue of powdered red ochre and acacia-tree gum to keep their tools (above, a replicated tool with adhesive made by scientists) intact, a May 2009 study says.
Stone Age Superglue Found — Hints at Unknown Smarts?
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Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. And he has a new best-of writing collection and “lazy man’s memoir,” called Borg Like Me.
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I’m gonna make some of this and see how well it works. It would be pretty incredible if you can make a glue that would work well enough to bind axeheads to handles by mixing just two natural materials.
It could well have been coincidence that some gum from an Acacia tree (giraffes love these leaves) was dripping onto the soil beneath (containing red ochre) mixed with some stones lying around and became stuck together over time. Some lucky ancient hunter was wandering along, saw the mix and went: “Mmmm … that’s interesting!” What’s the point of harvesting gums from various trees and trying out with different soil mixes. Better be out hunting, instead.
The process used by these scientists is described in great detail here:
http://witsetd.wits.ac.za:8080/dspace/bitstream/123456789/1757/2/Preliminaries2.pdf
Be warned, it’s a 160 page .pdf, but if you’re interested in this it’s got all the detail you need.