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Scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used
- Izkata 3y agoTitle made me think "isn't 'try them out' usually one of the first steps?" Actual content: They tested damage patterns on the tools to find what the tools were used on.
- rvense 3y agoI live near an experimental archaeological centre with roots going back to the 60's. I read a book by one of the founders, where he relates making his first flint axe at approximately age 16 and being so excited he went straight to the garden and cut down a tree - without asking for permission first... thankfully he had very supportive parents.
- WalterBright 3y agoWas it a cherry tree he chopped down?
- mywacaday 3y agoIsn't this pretty much the definition of the scientific method
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- wazoox 3y agoExperimental archaeology is at least 50 year old, but they're presenting that like it's brand new. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_archaeology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_archaeology
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- QuesnayJr 3y agoThere's got to be some miscommunication between the researchers and the journalists as to the contribution. I know anthropology undergraduates who years ago had whole courses where they had to make and use their own stone tools.
- pavel_lishin 3y agoObligatory link to Primitive Technology on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@primitivetechnology9550 https://www.youtube.com/@primitivetechnology9550 Although, he doesn't recreate past technology - I think he researches what technology could have existed, given the knowledge of our time. Things like his blowers, and his iron smelting processes. Of course, there's only so much you can do with rocks & sticks, so most of what he makes ends up being pretty similar to historical tools & buildings.
- profsummergig 3y agoThis channel is so, so important, I can't say enough. Selections of this channel's content should be included in children's school curricula.
- ihuman 3y agoIf you watch any of his videos, I recommend turning on captions. He uses them to explain what he's doing, and why.
- ahazred8ta 3y agoThere was one fellow who smelted copper ore and tin ore, made copper wire and a vinegar battery, and made a working telegraph that could have been built any time since 3000 BC.
- WalterBright 3y agoTo make use of telegraphy, one would need to know how to read & write. The most useful inventions in history: 1. reading & writing 2. paper 3. printing press 4. computers & networking Note that they're all about preserving and sharing information.
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoYeah, those fire, pots and crops where so useless compared to those. And the wheel? Na, it's not that important.
- matt3210 3y agoWho first decided to melt the rocks and get the iron?
- defrost 3y agoSomebody watching lava flows, slag, and wondering if they can recreate that heat. Metal work also started with softer easier to melt metals from much purer near surface veins and worked outwards toward harder less pure more deeply buried metals.
- pi-e-sigma 3y agoI think metal work started with gold. It naturally occurs in a 'ready for use' form of nuggets. You don't need to melt anything and nuggets are very soft and easy to form into any desirable shape. Most likely it's initial use was the jewelry because shiny!
- defrost 3y agoSignificant metal working and mining appears to have started at least 7,000 BCE with copper and lead - both (once) appear in surface | near surface deposits that can be chased back and are relatively easy to smash out and cold work when (near) 'pure'. Ready to work gold nuggets are what they are and are rarer to find. Metal work evolved with mining, chasing surface veins back, and this started in a significant way for first lead|copper, then tin, then other metals. There's a recognised pre Bronze "Copper Age", then Bronze, then Iron. Gold is shiny, beyond that it has a limited utility until the age of electronics; it's a bit soft for weapons or armour, a bit rare for sealing pipes, a bit non reactive for easy chemisty^H Alchemy, etc. Lot's of fun for decorations.
- narag 3y agoThe moment men learned to make fire, be sure there was some guy there that put everything to the fire to see what happened. How do I know? I would have been that guy.
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- pbj1968 3y agoWould have been better had they gotten machinists or rural people that otherwise work with their hands to do this. A bunch of scientists playing make believe chopping wood and scraping bone doesn’t convince me much. We would have been just as specialized back then as we are now. And don’t we have 30,000 year old jewelry with intricate carvings? Why the amazement at “wow, this pointy stone chops wood, man?”
- marcellus23 3y ago> We would have been just as specialized back then as we are now. Can you please cite some evidence for this? My understanding is that specialization into trades was an outcome of the agricultural revolution, which happened quite a bit later than 30,000 BC.
- taway_6PplYu5 3y agoI've read that many ant species have more "roles" than a typical British village prior to the industrial revolution. Note that this is in agreement with you, that the number of trades open for people to work in was pretty small until fairly recently.
- username135 3y agoDon't we have small populations around the globe that still do this? Wouldnt it have neen easier to observe them?
- defrost 3y agoThey're not frozen in time. Spear fishing hunter gatherers, for example, are out there but they've moved on to using steel rebar for barb points over stingraytail barbs, wire wrap for binding over chewing just the right branch fibres, and iPhones over smoke signals. It's similar but not the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gmCX7R-W4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gmCX7R-W4c
- eszed 3y ago
- sillysaurusx 3y agoI’ve found myself infected with a desire to have a machine shop. I don’t exactly know what I’d use it for, but there’s something so cool about making your own stuff. This fellow inherited his grandfather’s machine shop https://youtu.be/hearLttbrLo?si=r2CHxdepmhQ71xJq https://youtu.be/hearLttbrLo?si=r2CHxdepmhQ71xJq and used it to make… a pen. https://youtu.be/j27RKTHMLkA?si=f5OPN7ZJ10EBSZa4 https://youtu.be/j27RKTHMLkA?si=f5OPN7ZJ10EBSZa4 And it’s an addiction I didn’t know I had. The gateway drug that led to all of this was a video about a $200 CNC mill https://youtu.be/K9pjduKSsKs?si=mOJGCF9X6_s7d-J9 https://youtu.be/K9pjduKSsKs?si=mOJGCF9X6_s7d-J9 which led to a tour of his machine shop https://youtu.be/bHnfvtYHn7k?si=w65ZPfYm_5xpdkcD https://youtu.be/bHnfvtYHn7k?si=w65ZPfYm_5xpdkcD and a video about making a library. For his apartment. With a ladder that rolls along the shelves. https://youtu.be/DPRQaPVuRxU?si=uyR5xMDWgrYzHqlp https://youtu.be/DPRQaPVuRxU?si=uyR5xMDWgrYzHqlp I’ve been making things for… I probably shouldn’t have calculated it, but it turns out to be 23 years now. They’ve all been digital. Somehow it never occurred to me that you can just make things yourself rather than buy it from Amazon. It sounds stupid to write it out like that, but it’s an easy thing to overlook, because you can go your whole life without thinking about it. There’s also no limit to the stuff you can cobble together. Here’s someone whose channel averages about 30 views per video, who made a vacuum pump out of a refrigerator compressor. https://youtu.be/4Zg0EXvyD-4?si=f6oB8ScuhDd64T6n https://youtu.be/4Zg0EXvyD-4?si=f6oB8ScuhDd64T6n (His channel also has hundreds of videos with dozens of projects, including making his own friggin’ laser CNC machine from scratch via arduino and time. https://youtu.be/0z-zXQ2INp4?si=Y0Ao6dwr1YpQVqU7 https://youtu.be/0z-zXQ2INp4?si=Y0Ao6dwr1YpQVqU7 I have no idea how no one has noticed him yet.) All of this culminated into an intersection of everything I’ve been interested in recently: 3D resin-printed molds for plastic injection molding. https://youtu.be/wMRSPXt48CI?si=5IeQnSi89byrr0Il https://youtu.be/wMRSPXt48CI?si=5IeQnSi89byrr0Il You can make practically anything you can think of, and they don’t feel cheap. Not to punch down on normal 3D printers; some people love them, but a larger contingent dismiss most of what they can make as cheap toys. They’re not wrong. It’s interesting tracing a line from the Stone Age tools to these. The people back then were smart and industrious. If you gave them a lathe, I wonder what they would have made.
- tooltechgeek 3y agoI’m on the same boat, currently working on making my own multi tools. I reckon it can be a rabbit hole as I see all that’s involved in knife making and blacksmithing.
- midn1ghtexpress 3y agoAre Chomsticks considered primitive tech?
- fbdab103 3y agoReminded of the 2013 Ignoble award[0] where someone ate a shrew to determine what remains would be available for study. ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE: Brian Crandall [USA] and Peter Stahl [CANADA, USA], for parboiling a dead shrew, and then swallowing the shrew without chewing, and then carefully examining everything excreted during subsequent days — all so they could see which bones would dissolve inside the human digestive system, and which bones would not. [0] https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2013 https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2013
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- Aardwolf 3y agoIf an archeologist from the far future finds these, they'll be utterly confused
- Aeolun 3y agoThey’ll just a have a big discussion on whether the big war actually happened in 2020 or 2050.
- jdjdbw 3y agoI don't think so, for the future it would be easy to recreate what the situation was, I could determine that they are tools recreated by scientists from the past.
- eesmith 3y agoThe archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered a room in the Ur temple complex containing items which were far older than the ~530 BCE expected. They were organized and labeled in three different languages, leading Woolley to conclude they were an archeological museum now referred to as Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennigaldi-Nanna%27s_museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennigaldi-Nanna%27s_museum
- qwerty456127 3y agoLet me suggest a nonsensical idea just for fun: let's found a scientific institute (staffed with volunteers and funded with donations, obviously) purposefully limited to conduct all their tasks (actual science, administrative chores, living) with stone age tools only. Or perhaps also with medieval and whatever they manage to build themselves using such. It would be very curious to see what modern, educated, exclusively high-IQ (implied from them having managed to graduate in science) humans can achieve in a stone age setting. Ideas of outcomes possible, experiments conductable and apparata buildable this way are welcome :-)
- luxuryballs 3y agoDo we get lots of servants?
- qwerty456127 3y agoAs soon as somebody volunteers to serve this way. Of course there can be a hierarchy of a sort and specialization like in any other institute. Some do more science, some do more chores, depending on what they can and feel like doing.
- londons_explore 3y agoThe primitive technology YouTube channel is pretty much this. He doesn't use any equipment, materials or tools he hasn't made himself from the earth. And, after many years of effort, he has managed to make some (not great quality) iron. He has also made bricks, pottery, a fan and buildings.
- jdjdbw 3y agoI'm off topic, but can you imagine that in the future there could be an electronic device and through advanced studies on material, atoms and quantum, they could recreate all the information that said device once had? I imagine they could study the Internet of the past even if the backups were lost.