Posted on 12/04/2007 6:32:34 PM PST by BGHater
ARCHAEOLOGISTS in Germany have found a 2,000-year-old glue Roman warriors used to repair helmets, shields and the other accessories of battle.
"Caesar's superglue" - as it has been dubbed by workers at the Rhine State Museum in Bonn - was found on a helmet at a site near Xanthen on the Rhine River where Romans settled before Christ.
Frank Welker, a restorer at the museum, said: "We found the parade cavalry helmet had been repaired with an adhesive that was still doing its job.
"This is rightly called some kind of superglue because air, water and time have not diminished its bonding properties. We haven't mixed up a batch ourselves yet, but we can thoroughly reccommend it - it lasts, after all, for 2,000 years."
The adhesive was made from a mixture of bitumen, cattle fat and bark pitch.
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Thanks BGHater. The Romans should have taken it to the logical next step -- glue traps, so their charging enemies would be stuck fast, sitting ducks. ;') |
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Bitumen meatloaf. Yum. Gnawing on asphalt can cause serious dental problems though.
Thanks for the ping!
You’ve nailed it, or adhesive seems that way to me...
I also believe they could tell a customer, who was waiting, “Stick tight!”
The inventor told the truth when he said, this glue is guaranteed for MM years or your money back. Unfortunately he was killed for insulting Caeser when he named the product, “Glueteous Maximus”.
Ambroise Pare, one of the Fathers of Surgery used oil made of egg yolk, oil of roses and turpentine to dress wounds in the middle ages because lamp oil was too expensive. He adapted it from Roman practices.
Makes perfect horsesense to me.
(I'm at work, so I cant hang around, have to trot along now.)
“the Legionaries age was into the 60’s barring death...”
LOL Let me correct that
the Legionaries age was into the 60’s barring death in battle
which I guess would be a bit of an statistical “anomaly” :~>
Of course. The Romans got there first, and they wouldn't share, so He moved on and settled elsewhere.
Sorry, Lonesome, but it was the Heinkel He 162 Volksjager (People's Fighter) that was made from mostly wood that suffered from poor quality adhesives. This was very late in the war when most materials other than wood were in very short supply. Test flights of the 162 had wings and such coming apart.
The 262 was mainly metal construction.
From nps.gov:
“Early 18th-century wallpapers were sometimes pasted sheet by sheet to the wall. American references indicate that papers were sometimes fixed to fabrics and canvas before they were hung. But by the mid-18th century, papers were more commonly bought in rolls, and pasted directly to the walls. An invoice of paper hangings shipped in 1799 from London to Virginia was accompanied by a note: “The process of putting up paper hangings is to have the wall as smooth as possible and then to be well sized over. The ingredients used for making of paste is flour and water with a small quantity of Allum put in and boiled till quite thick.” Although such water-soluble pastes were the most common, not all paper was put up with water-soluble adhesives. (In salvage operations one finds that some pastes resist all chemical solvents!)”
I sure you’re right, instead of “as I recall” shudda said iirc. Apparently not.
Thanks,
I wonder how much of that "average age of mid 40's" was due to averaging in infant mortality (ie, if 33% of your population dies before age 5, but once you reach adulthood you had a good chance of living till 60, the "average" life expectancy would be mid-40's).
Only people who lived to at least 18 (or whatever average recruitment age would be) would be part of the Army statistics
LOL
Good catch
And you thought grandma’s fruitcake was only 100 years old.
Would that be 'current' lamp oil or when lamp oil = whale, dog fish, olive oil?
I know part of the Roman Soldier's 'rations' was garlic - used for energy but also for medicine, the same as it was in WWll - pass the crushed garlic over a wound and the oily vapor would kill even gangrene -
A Roman soldier caught without his garlic was disciplined
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