#knapping

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-09914-2

The Stone Age extends back before the genus Homo evolved, going back to 3,300,000 years ago, predating Homo by nearly a million years, and lasting until only 4,000 years ago, though there are some uses for stone tools still exist today, and covers a very wide variety of of stone tools and styles. These tools can be made by removing material through knapping, or removing material by percussive action, or grinding the material off through friction. Both of these can happen naturally, incidentally, or deliberately and when done deliberately leads to an archaeological industry, or complexes or technocomplexes, that have shared characteristics, either in how they're made or how they're shaped, usually defined by knapped stones.

These complexes are divided generally into a sequence of five Modes, with the first two, Modes 1 and 2, dating to the Lower Paleolithic, Mode 3 to the Middle Paleolithic, Mode 4 to the Upper Paleolithic, and Mode 5 to the Mesolithic. These modes don't encompass all the types of lithic technologies, nor do the timelines of one place exactly match the timelines of other places. The advantage of this system of categorizing stone tools by characteristics and complexity that tend to follow in generally chronological order.

More recent research has added a pre-Mode 1 and were found at a place known as Lomekwi near Lake Turkana in Kenya. Mode 1 was discovered in the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania and is now also known as the Oldowan Industry. Mode 2 was first found in Saint-Acheul, France and is also known as Acheulean Industry. First found in Le Moustier Mode 3 is also known as Mousterian Industry. Mode 4 is when humans began to spread into the New World and was first found in Aurignac, France and is therefore called the Aurignacian. Mode 5 is defined by the production of microlithis and composite tools.

I'm working together with my friend Smolzilla (credits in extended view) to test knapping Schkepian spear- and arrowhead designs from the speculative world I'm working on.

This is a scaled-down version of an arrowhead based on the sketch I did for a Lyxian spear:

Started with this over a million years prior:

We got here literally from bashing bones and rocks together, and the only thing that set us apart was the ability to sweat, to come together in numbers, and to put our minds together to solve any problem. These tools represent the start of an ingenuity so complex and exponentially expanding. This piece of hippo bone turned into an axe is what leads to a human being on the actual fucking moon in space!

Never forget where we came from, and just how much we had to do before we could even think about flight, let alone above the sky entirely. This goes out to Homo Erectus, a hardcore and extremely adaptive and inventive people, that lived longer than even our own species has by magnitude.

Homo Erectus survived so that Homosapiens could thrive.

Repair time

One I never sell a piece that something I made for the first time like a folding knife. Two because this is a gift I'm not sure if they'll be any more pictures after this point so here's the end of day three folks

You know, Valentine’s Day is just around the corner . . .

At least in older pop culture, Neanderthals are often displayed as these brutish little creatures with their clubs and leopard skin. Now, I would like to believe that this is not the view held by modern scientist. Nonetheless, it is a seldom event that we feel like we understand our ancestors on an emotional level. Let me tell you a story of how I deeply related to a person lost to deep time.

Let's set the scene: Picture a house in the Levant, with a nice big olive tree in the courtyard. It's a research station for archaeologists. During our stay I developed a passion for knapping flint in that courtyard. Knapping is the practice of forming stone by hitting it with with another smaller stone. As a beginner, I first learned doing handaxes.

One evening, as I was finishing the best piece as of yet, I managed to break of the point. I was naturally rather upset and wishing for a undo button until I formed another, albeit duller point. I had just finished when one of my lecturers passed me. I showed my masterpiece to him. He took it from me, turned it around several times and then laughed. He has this special laugh he only uses when he has figured out something.

To my astonishment, he walked away (with the handax) and went to check on the artefacts we had collected to far. Curious, I follow him. When I am next to him, he shows me two handaxes. One I have just produced, the other he has taken from the bag. They are almost the same shape. Now I laugh as well.

A person some 100k years ago must have made the same experience like I had. They must have felt the annoyance at breaking a good point and then redone it. Time and nature have formed concretions on it, but the emotion is still there. That day, I related to a Neanderthal, and it is still a strange thought.