4 ms·

Obsidian handaxe-making workshop from 1.2M years ago discovered in Ethiopia

• 082349872349872 4y ago
  > Handaxes were made by chipping bits off of a stone to make a sharp edge. As I understand knapping, in theory it's "chipping bits off" but in practice it's "chipping off small bits now in exactly the right places so you can chip off a large flake later", or worse, "chipping off the slightly wrong bit, and now instead of a large flake that resulted in a nice long sharp edge, you have to go back and start over with the small bits". Analogies with software development are left as an exercise for the reader.