Glued Up: The Sticky Story of Humanity

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Glues hold our world together – and have done since the dawn of civilisation.

Mark Miodownik explores how glues hold our world together – and how they have shaped our species since the dawn of civilisation.

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Glued Up: The Sticky Story of Humanity: The Birth of Civilisation

The Birth of Civilisation

BBC Radio 4 - Glued Up: The Sticky Story of Humanity, The Birth of Civilisation

Modern life would quite literally fall apart without glues – they hold our buildings, our phones, even our bodies together. But the story of stickiness runs much deeper than that. In fact, our greatest leaps forward as a species couldn’t have happened without adhesives.  
 
In this series, materials scientist Mark Miodownik charts the journey of human progress through the sticky substances that have shaped us. In episode one he explores the very earliest adhesives, dating back at least 190,000 years, that allowed our ancestors to invent, innovate, and make the first tools.

And he hears how lumps of these prehistoric glues contain fragments of the stone age people who used them, trapped in time for thousands of years.

Contributors:
Geeske Langejans, Delft University of Technology
Hannes Schroeder, University of Copenhagen


Producer: Anand Jagatia
Presenter: Mark Miodownik
Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem
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Glued Up: The Sticky Story of Humanity

The Birth of Civilisation

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