In addition to aspiration of ancients for mysterious power, what secrets remain on a scepter that is more than 3,500 years old? Yimin Yang, a professor of the Department for the History of Science and Scientific Archaeology at the University of Science and technology of China, and his research team did an amazing discovery on a scepter in the Xiaohe Cemetery. From this scepter, they extracted trace of adhesive used to affix bone decoration. It was found that this adhesive was bovine glue whose main component is gelatin. This is the oldest adhesive found in China so far and traces the history of Chinese animal glue back to 3500 years ago. According to previous discoveries, the earliest glue used in China was in the Han Dynasty.
It was great significant to human civilization that animal glue promoted the development of complex tools effectively. However, the ancient organic glue was often degraded by bacterium, so its composition had always been a mystery. The Xiaohe Cemetery in Xinjiang is located in the hinterland of Asia where the sea vapor can hardly reach. The extremely rare rainfall in dry desert kills microorganisms, so the animal glue underground can be unchanged for thousands of years. The infrared spectra analysis and proteomic technique helped archeologists make an accurate conclusion from the milligram-level residues: this glue was made from cattle bones. Professor Yang said: "This kind of cattle glue is actually gelatin. Bone, skin, and tendon were boiled in a pot to obtain a sticky soup, which was a most convenient method to produce gelatin.
From the world earliest cheese to the China earliest glue, every discovery of the Xiaohe Cemetery is rewriting our history.