Glue recipes and prehistoric brainpower
Researcher Hans Poulis (Director TU Delft Adhesion Institute) has tested the strength of recreated prehistoric glues for archaeologists Geeske Langejans and Paul Kozowyk (Leiden University). The researchers from Leiden University used the tests in the Aerospace Engineering lab to test their ideas about the evolution of the modern brain. The prehistoric glue recipes are a good indication of brainpower. After all, producing a good glue was a precise job: you needed a good understanding of the ingredients and also of abstract concepts, such as miscibility, stiffness, viscosity and tack. This research on prehistoric glue recipes was published in PLOS ONE and is part of Geeske Langejans’s Veni project, funded by NWO.