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5,300-year-old 'bow drill' rewrites story of ancient Egyptian tools
- toolslive 9mo agoIt's what a lot of engineers have been saying for decades: Looking at the surfaces of the artefacts, it's obvious more advanced tooling, than what was claimed by archaeologists, must have been used. Oh irony, the bits were already lying about in the museum's archive for a century.
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- MarkusQ 9mo agoQuite frustrating how archeology swings over the years from "we'll believe anything" to "we won't accept any claim without a preserved example". While some of the excesses of the past were clearly excessive, drilled holes should have been sufficient evidence of drills, people living on islands should be sufficient evidence of boats, rope-worn bones should be considered evidence of rope and so forth.
- andrewflnr 9mo agoBalance would be nice, yes, but I think the conservative approach is closer to correct, especially given the natural human bias toward believing sensational theories.
- twodave 9mo agoMaybe not closer to correct, but definitely less likely to admit errors. But sometimes the negative space around a particular thing becomes overwhelming. To me this is like circumstantial evidence—in general it’s weaker than physical evidence, but in high enough numbers it can serve.
- mmooss 9mo agoBut what does the negative space indicate? It says something is missing - which few will dispute - but there are many possible answers in a sort of superposition. Speculation about this answer or that one isn't reliable. It resolves to one answer (or a few) when you have actual evidence.
- twodave 9mo agoSure, you can’t always make a definitive statement, but you can at least determine classes of things. Same way we can determine a murder occurred without recovering a weapon or sometimes even without finding a body. Maybe we can’t be very specific about the how, but IME it is also OK to draw comparisons to modern tools so long as those comparisons are helpful.
- mmooss 9mo agoSpeculation may usefully provide leads to investigate, but it's meaningless as a conclusion and won't be accepted by scientists or anyone else serious (including courts); they require evidence. > you can’t always make a definitive statement It's far short of that. Human speculation is wildly unreliable and we seem to always overestimate it, perhaps because it's emotionally satisfying: What other speculative answer would we choose but something that satisfies our emotions? Lacking evidence, nothing compels us to face the unpleasant or unexpected. Look what our understanding of nature and the world was before we required evidence (before science).
- mojomark 9mo agoThat's an interesting thought. I wonder if you can quantify this belief? That Weibull (presumably) distribution would be an interesting and useful thing to know.
- andrewflnr 9mo agoQuantify the belief that humans are biased toward sensationalism? No, I have no idea how to do that. Actually you could make an argument that it's a bit circular, that "sensationalism" is defined as the kind of ideas that humans are biased towards and which are therefore more able to cause a "sensation". But if you don't see how people yearn to believe in big dramatic things like conspiracies, aliens, bigfoot, or even simple narratives about single people changing the course of history, and how they only accept the complicated and/or boring reality with conscious effort, then, well, you seem to be living in a better universe than I am.
- MarkusQ 9mo agoUnfortunately, you also sometimes throw out explanations like "they did X in substantially the same way as their descents were doing X up until the late 1800s" or "they used it for Y, just at it was used at other sites throughout the world." At least in the case of things like migrations, we're starting to get overwhelming genetic evidence.
- andrewflnr 9mo agoI agree that's an overcorrection. People doing things the same way they have for centuries should be high on the list of plausible, boring explanations.
- legulere 9mo agoThe problem is that you get a vastly distorted picture because of different survivorship rates of artifacts. In the Stone Age people used mostly wood tools but stone tools didn’t rot away.
- andrewflnr 9mo agoQuite. > Balance would be nice, yes
- dev_l1x_be 9mo agoWhat is more sensational: a, you can drill a hole and cut a 100 ton stone block with a chisel b, you create a hole with a drill, you use some for of stone cutting technology that supports cutting 100 ton stone blocks?
- pinkmuffinere 9mo agoIt can be legitimately unclear. Relatively-advanced technology being available to early humans is remarkable. Likewise, achieving difficult tasks without the relatively-advanced technology is remarkable. Some prototypical examples of this: - Incan stonework with stones 'perfectly' cut to fit without mortar -- did they have advanced tools to support that? Or just persistence? - Greek fire -- is there some lost mechanism here? Or just the growth of legends? - the pyramids (I think not so controversial among academics, but certainly in pop culture)
- andrewflnr 9mo agoNeither of those is particularly sensational. What's your point?
- FranklinJabar 9mo ago> we'll believe anything Can you explain what you're referring to? Obviously "ancient aliens" does not count as archaeology, despite your insistence otherwise.
- MarkusQ 9mo agoThe Kamitakamori tools? Piltdown fossils? The pattern roughly seems to be "if you have physical artifacts that support a theory / fit a pattern they will be accepted (even if bogus) but if you have a theory that explains facts (e.g. drilled holes) but no physical artifacts (in this case drills) it will be rejected". (Just saw the snark about ancient aliens; no idea where that came from. If you're going to try to imply that that's my position you'll need to produce some artifacts to back it up.)
- MarkusQ 9mo agoAnd for the record, my grump here is about soft / organic tools and artifacts and coastal / high weathering sites being discounted while everyone falls all over themselves for rocks and bones, even if fake. No aliens, just weavers, sailors, and the like.
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- mmooss 9mo ago> The Kamitakamori tools? Piltdown fossils? The pattern roughly seems to be "if you have physical artifacts that support a theory / fit a pattern they will be accepted (even if bogus) Two examples from over a century is not evidence of unreliability. > if you have a theory that explains facts (e.g. drilled holes) but no physical artifacts (in this case drills) it will be rejected". Evidence is a requirement in all scholarship; the rest is speculation - which can be useful as a direction for searching for evidence, but is not sufficient to be accepted in any field. What field accepts claims without evidence?
- beloch 9mo agoIt's possible to put holes through things without a drill. People can get onto islands without boats. How do you define rope, and what else might cause similar wear? Are you certain you can distinguish them? Archaeology has come a long way over the last couple of centuries. It used to be little better than grave robbing and crackpot (often racist) theories. Archaeologists made all sorts of assumptions that turned out to be ridiculously (and sometimes tragically) wrong. Excavations once involved dynamite and bulldozers. Things have changed. Techniques for re-analyzing and extracting new information from old finds are allowing archaeologists to make discoveries without digging at all. Even a careful, modern dig is a destructive act that can only be conducted once. It's not frustrating. It's progress.
- buran77 9mo agoIf you find a man made hole with a perfectly vertical shaft and high aspect ratio (tall and narrow), it was drilled. Individuals can float or be washed ashore on an island, populations can't. If you find entire civilizations on distant islands, they got there by some sort of boat or advanced raft. Rope generally implies twisted or braided fibers, so maybe it's difficult to tell if this was artificially twisted or a natural one like a vine. But if it looked like a rope, and was used like a rope then it was a rope.
- mmooss 9mo ago> archeology swings over the years from "we'll believe anything" to "we won't accept any claim without a preserved example". Could you provide some evidence of your own? Archaeology has always been tied to evidence, as any scholarship is.
- saidnooneever 9mo agothey dont even accept claims with properly documented and preserved samples. your methodology doesnt matter if it disagrees with the common accepted 'truth'. archeology is a cesspool. not to mention tons of hings being twisted into weird shit only to try and push colonial agendas!
- tephra 9mo agoDo you have any examples of this?
- Intermernet 9mo agoThis has been less true for the last 50 years. Archaeology as a field is very aware of this cultural bias, and the old school are mostly dead. Think of it like the doctors of 150 years ago prescribing "cucaine for ill humors". It's a pendulum, but it's settling. These days it's seen as a dynamic decision tree. If such and such people had so and so technology, then the logical ways to achieve that are x, y and z methods. Let's look for evidence for those things and weigh up the probability of each. Importantly, let's not allow cultural bias to cloud that analysis by consulting with the closest living relatives of said people. The problems are, amongst others, maintaining that lack of cultural bias, recognising that you have to allow for unknown paths to technology, and being aware that every deductive step exponentially expands the decision tree whilst simultaneously clouding the certainty. This is why modern archaeology is actually highly averse to saying things are "true", but it's also very strong on saying other things are almost certainly "false". Most things in this tree of dwindling probability are "false" , and it takes serious evidence, linking a bunch of deductive steps, to flip the consensus to "true".
- robin_reala 9mo agopeople living on islands should be sufficient evidence of boats Historical sea levels were wildly different at different times, so not necessarily. For instance, the British isles were settled at a point when it was a part of the mainland: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doggerland.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doggerland.png
- MarkusQ 9mo agoCertainly. Land bridges are also a thing. As is swimming, in some cases.
- Intermernet 9mo agoThis is true, but archaeology has been settled for a while now on what constitutes sufficient evidence. Believe it or not, it's actually a pretty new science.
- MarkusQ 9mo agoOr will be, soon. :)
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- FranklinJabar 9mo agoThis is true in many, many, many, many places. It takes a significantly higher bar of evidence to put forward specific tooling than an engineer's intuition to make the mark in archaeology.
- gehsty 9mo agoIt sounds very un-archaeologist to not investigate the gap between artifact and tooling (like that’s their job?). For me the ‘archaeology not accepting things’ has been fueled by Graham Hancock etc. Archaeology is a lot like science, it sits on a body of research, if there’s evidence of advanced tooling and it’s properly investigated and written up, verified, no archaeologist would deny it.
- jazz9k 9mo agoIt's this kind of gate keeping in archaeology that has kept Graham Hancock out of the industry for years, and we are now just finding out his theories are true. My theory is that the industry is so small, they are afraid it will put them out of a career.
- Intermernet 9mo agoNo judgement, but what theories of Hancock have been proven to be true?
- dev_l1x_be 9mo agoI am really curious about the scoop marks across the globe. The hole drilling story is only interesting because of the precision and feed-per-revolution which is probably why archaeologists does not understand how advanced those people creating this holes must have been.
- Oarch 9mo agoFor the curious, Clickspring has recreated something a lot like this and uses it on his Antikythera Mechanism videos on YT.
- Intermernet 9mo agoThankyou. I was going to point this out. Chris (ClickSpring) is the first to say that his methods are not proven, they're just highly believable given the technology of the time. I did some archaeology at uni and I know we're not meant to say this, but sometimes things are just so obvious even when there is no physical evidence of it. Archaeological proofs have the unfortunate property of having each deductive step being fairly obvious and limited, but proving those steps can be literally impossible.
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- chmod775 9mo agoGiven need, access to anything that might serve as string, pieces of wood, and too much time to think about the problem, most singular humans will come up with that within the year, if not within days. That thing has probably been independently invented a hundred thousand times over. Trying to figure out who did it first is silly. Also that is not a "sophisticated" tool at all. It's literally one step above hitting rocks together. Sharp rocks happens to be the only tool you need to make a basic bow drill.
- Brian_K_White 9mo agoBasic research is never silly.
- andrewflnr 9mo ago> Trying to figure out who did it first is silly. True. Good thing no one is trying to do that.
- ReptileMan 9mo agoBut to make a drill bit of highly alloyed copper you need a bit more tools and knowledge
- vee-kay 9mo agoDo a web search for "Wootz steel", "Damascus blades" and "Iron pillars India". The ancient world certainly had expertise in advanced metallurgy. Wootz steel was actually nanotech.
- profsummergig 9mo agoBow drills were still commonly used in India in 25 years ago. Because electricity was unreliable and machinery was expensive.
- eth0up 9mo agoI keep one of those Amish hand-crank drills in my vehicle toolbox. I have one in the closet too. I have a thing for old tools, but not much can substitute a drill when one is needed. And the ones I refer to are surprisingly effective, and built to last. Borders on art for me.
- zkmon 9mo agoIndian carpenters always had a drill with large spindle around which a long rope is wound. A person pulls the rope back and forth spinning the drill. Another person holds the drill in position using a flat wood piece at the top with small hole to hold the drill axle. Same technique is also used for spinning a wooden churner to get butterfat out of curd. A standing woman would pull the rope back and forth for a few minutes on the long churner stick that is churning the curd in a clay pot placed on the floor.
- timerol 9mo ago> always Can you be more specific here? In an article about civilization 5300 years ago, where India has had a human population for at least 65,000 years, saying "always" is fairly vague
- zkmon 9mo agoSorry I was referring to mechanical techniques of spinning a drill in general, that I'm familiar with, in addition to the bow method described. I was not referring to any time scale.
- pinkmuffinere 9mo agoI want to be as polite as possible, but explain the confusion that timerol was experiencing, just in case it was unclear. Because the article's focus is about the oldest "sophisticated drilling tool", and your comment said "Indian carpenters always had ...", the implication is that you're disagreeing with the article being discussed. The information you share is interesting, but it's slightly off topic from the main point of discussion (ie, the age of sophisticated tooling). You can avoid confusion like this by explicitly acknowledging when you're going to go off-topic. Eg, you could say "Not related to the age of the tool, but I saw similar tools used in India -- Indian carpenters always had..." I hope that explanation is polite and maybe helpful :). Apologies if I over-explained. Somewhat relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle
- vee-kay 9mo agoHominin history is millions of years old. 5300 years is merely a drop in the ocean of human history.
- Jerrrrrrrry 9mo agoWe were building houses and boats a million years ago. The last 10 years have been enlightening.
- rm30 9mo agoI think archaeology requires a multidisciplinary approach that has only recently begun to emerge. For too long, especially in past centuries, archaeologists focused on history and languages while neglecting engineering, chemistry and the practical techniques that enabled survival and innovation. That's why the general public views our ancestors as 'primitive,' when in reality they possessed techniques many of which we've lost or still don't fully understand.
- aydyn 9mo ago> That's why the general public views our ancestors as 'primitive,' when in reality they possessed techniques many of which we've lost or still don't fully understand. Well stated. We often forget that people in the past had the same exact minds and abilities as the people of today and were in no way inferior or "primitive". I think this accounts for a lot of presentism that leaks into our understanding of history.
- spwa4 8mo agoOn the other hand, it's becoming pretty clear that the dark ages were not an exceptional period and that mostly, humans don't advance or even regress ... because they just don't see the point.
- IAmBroom 8mo agoOne could almost say that need creates innovative spirit, in a sort of motherly fashion. I wish there were a shorter way to express this idea...
- rm30 9mo agoI wonder if the bow drill principle for boring holes evolved from fire-starting techniques, where the same reciprocal motion was already understood and mastered in that years. Just speculation, but it suggests how practical problem-solving builds on existing techniques rather than appearing fully formed.
- Sharlin 9mo agoGiven that humans must have "always" known that carving a hole in something is easier if you use your wrist to reciprocally rotate the tool, I'd be inclined to suspect that both hole-making and firestarting with a bow drill were invented more or less contemporaneously.
- MomsAVoxell 9mo agoYes, but didn’t our wrists evolve because of all the fire-starting?
- lostlogin 9mo agoArsonists being more developed hominids?
- Jerrrrrrrry 9mo agoArsonist wouldnt exist if there was nt general fascination with fire in most people. Neanderthals existed just fine without it for some time, interestingly.
- thordenmark 9mo agoConspiracy theorists have long pointed out the obviously drilled holes in stonework that was >5000 years old. Of course they want to attribute it to lost advanced technology, but the more believable answer is that ancient Egyptians had really refined mundane tools like a bow drill. I still want to know how the scoop marks were made in the ancient quarries. What tool could do that?
- dev_l1x_be 9mo agoSo they were right when questioning the chisel story? Btw. the scoop marks are still a mystery. I would not classify people who are challenging the current narratives conspiracy theorists, they are skeptics really.
- orwin 8mo agoPeople who don't have a theory are skeptics. People who do are not. And you can challenge any narrative you want, especially when no consensus exists. A lot of archeologists though bow drill was a reasonable explanation about some stonework, but as none were found (yet), none of them wrote about it. It is still talked about as interesting research subject. Another interesting subject is the usage of acidic mixtures in Inca stoneworks (to help grind stones). You won't see any layman article on it, but it is heavily discussed (just go on Reddit).
- lostlogin 9mo agoAfter a search for scoop marks I found this (second image in particular). Is this what you mean? https://www.reddit.com/r/AlternativeHistory/comments/u33lbj/any_theories_on_how_these_scooplike_cuts_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AlternativeHistory/comments/u33lbj/...
- 12345hn6789 9mo agoYes these are found in a few places in Egypt and notably some are dug vertically [0]. Along with these "scoop" marks there are a few tombs "boxes at serapeum" that have nearly perfectly squared off cuts and perfectly smooth surfaces. [1] These are the main points of contention We are leaning into conspiracy theories / not accepted history but making these marks with the currently thought tools seems quite insensible, and are related to the article. Folks seem to think we have not found the real tools that created these structures. The vertical inward scoop marks are especially suspect. [0] - https://www.theancientconnection.com/aswan-unfinished-obelisk/ https://www.theancientconnection.com/aswan-unfinished-obelis... [1] - https://www.theancientconnection.com/megaliths/egypt/the-serapeum-of-saqqara/ https://www.theancientconnection.com/megaliths/egypt/the-ser...
- dev_l1x_be 9mo agoOhh no, i thought the science is settled on slaves and chisels.
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