Dateline Stone Age: the long hunt is over, the deer speared, and the camp smells of roast meat and cooking smoke. The feast is over, but the hunters are still sitting together, and looking at their tools. Things have been lost and damaged before and during the hunt – the ax is broken, new arrows are needed, and the women are bringing broken pots. That would be no problem today, just get out the tube of glue and you’re done. But 40,000 years ago?

“Of course, we really know very little about the technologies our ancestors used to make and maintain their tools,” says Michael Herrmann, a chemist at LANXESS. “But they did know more than many people today believe. For example, when they wanted to join the two parts of an ax together, they were capable of a lot more than just winding and tying vines or hemp around it, like you see in the comics.” In fact, our forefathers already had some remarkable technologies in their toolkit. For example, adhesives.