Rubber: The Social and Natural History of an Indispensable Substance

The Aztecs and the Mayas believed that rubber possessed immense cosmic significance. Today, it is an indispensable and omnipresent part of human society. But how did the journey of the substance take the turns that it did, transforming it from an object of amusing curiosity to one of necessity?
Natural sciences expert Vidya Rajan takes us back in time to the Mesoamerican civilisation when rubber extracted from trees was used for a surprising variety of from playing an early version of football to making waterproof footwear. She tells us about the patent wars that it sparked. Of how the demand for rubber triggered a terrible, gory exploitation of the native populations of the Amazon Basin and the Congo regions where rubber trees were found in abundance. Of how rubber came into existence at all, over aeons of existential struggle between plants and animals, and how it shaped them both.
This fascinating social and natural history of rubber will lay bare the extraordinary story of an ancient substance that underpins the fabric of our everyday lives.'