Yeah, people who eat a paleo diet without making their own stone tools are so fake.
Are there some people who do this for a hobby? You probably need the right kind of stone for that. How much time does it take for a relative beginner to produce one stone tool? If not too much, it could be an interesting summer camp activity.
I was first exposed to it (flintknapping, but you can also make stone tools by grinding stone) by a granduncle when I was very young (5), and did it as a hobby for the last ~1.5 years of my undergraduate degree while I was living with my parents. I don’t do it anymore because I live in an apartment and don’t have easy access to a space where I could do it. It takes a lot of outside area because you produce a lot of sharp stone flakes and silica dust which you don’t want in an area that is not well-ventilated.
You probably need the right kind of stone for that. How much time does it take for a relative beginner to produce one stone tool?
It doesn’t work with any rock. You need materials that produce conchoidal fractures. The most typical ones to work with are flint, chert, obsidian, and dacite. I’m not a geologist, but what is referred to as “dacite” in the flintknapping community doesn’t look a lot like what I see in the dacite Wikipedia article or Google Images (has a lot of inclusions, doesn’t look like it would fracture the right way). If you look up “flintknapping dacite” you’ll see it as a slightly glossy dark grey rock. More exotic materials are fossilized coral (“agatized coral”) and quartz crystals (https://www.zmescience.com/science/archaeology/rock-crystal-dagger/). Non-natural materials can be used as well. Some people knap with non-natural glass and I think porcelain.
There are several websites that sell the rocks you need for very cheap if you don’t live in an area where you can find them. They also sell traditional tools. The typical tools are other rocks (different kind) and antler. Sometimes copper is used, and I think it was used historically during the chalcolithic.
As to the difficulty of knapping, it depends heavily on the material. Obsidian (and by extension, probably manufactured glass as well) is by far the easiest of the materials I listed, followed by dacite. With the low level of skill I reached, I was only ever able to make decent looking tools out of obsidian and dacite. You need to strike the rocks very precisely to knap well, but for flint and chert you need to hit them a lot harder, which makes precise hits tougher IMO.
You can knap decent looking tools out of obsidian with not too much practice, and it is an extremely fun hobby that I would recommend quite highly. I was able to make do with YouTube tutorials and produced rough-looking blades with less than a week of practice (probably <10 hours). You’ll break a LOT of blades while learning though, which really sucks if they were looking nice up to that point. You’ll also cut yourself, especially if you don’t wear gloves. The cuts are generally very clean and heal nicely, especially with obsidian. I wear glasses for my vision, but I would probably wear protective glasses otherwise. Apparently Ishi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishi) had a technique for dislodging shards of the material from his eyes (https://archive.org/details/yahiarcherysaxton00poperich/page/116/mode/2up?q=eye).
Epistemic Status: Memory. I learnt this (weirdly) in an astrobiology course at University. And through long personal interest in prehistory.
I know that the stone heads themselves are flint. To get it into the shape you want, you have to hit the flint with a harder rock. You hit it for (I think) hours[1], in precise places around the edges. Inexperienced people may hit the flint too hard, when it’s nearing completion, shattering hours of work, and requiring the process to start again. I have heard learning how to make good spear heads can take quite a long time.
[Edit: I think I was wrong about the Hours thing. In David Miles’ “Tale of the Axe” he claims it takes ~20 minutes for an experienced individual to Knapp a flint hand-axe.]
Earlier this year I visited Povery Point in Louisianna. The don’t really have any stone nearby at all, so they traded for different kinds with people from as far away as the great lakes.
Yeah, people who eat a paleo diet without making their own stone tools are so fake.
Are there some people who do this for a hobby? You probably need the right kind of stone for that. How much time does it take for a relative beginner to produce one stone tool? If not too much, it could be an interesting summer camp activity.
I was first exposed to it (flintknapping, but you can also make stone tools by grinding stone) by a granduncle when I was very young (5), and did it as a hobby for the last ~1.5 years of my undergraduate degree while I was living with my parents. I don’t do it anymore because I live in an apartment and don’t have easy access to a space where I could do it. It takes a lot of outside area because you produce a lot of sharp stone flakes and silica dust which you don’t want in an area that is not well-ventilated.
It doesn’t work with any rock. You need materials that produce conchoidal fractures. The most typical ones to work with are flint, chert, obsidian, and dacite. I’m not a geologist, but what is referred to as “dacite” in the flintknapping community doesn’t look a lot like what I see in the dacite Wikipedia article or Google Images (has a lot of inclusions, doesn’t look like it would fracture the right way). If you look up “flintknapping dacite” you’ll see it as a slightly glossy dark grey rock. More exotic materials are fossilized coral (“agatized coral”) and quartz crystals (https://www.zmescience.com/science/archaeology/rock-crystal-dagger/). Non-natural materials can be used as well. Some people knap with non-natural glass and I think porcelain.
There are several websites that sell the rocks you need for very cheap if you don’t live in an area where you can find them. They also sell traditional tools. The typical tools are other rocks (different kind) and antler. Sometimes copper is used, and I think it was used historically during the chalcolithic.
As to the difficulty of knapping, it depends heavily on the material. Obsidian (and by extension, probably manufactured glass as well) is by far the easiest of the materials I listed, followed by dacite. With the low level of skill I reached, I was only ever able to make decent looking tools out of obsidian and dacite. You need to strike the rocks very precisely to knap well, but for flint and chert you need to hit them a lot harder, which makes precise hits tougher IMO.
You can knap decent looking tools out of obsidian with not too much practice, and it is an extremely fun hobby that I would recommend quite highly. I was able to make do with YouTube tutorials and produced rough-looking blades with less than a week of practice (probably <10 hours). You’ll break a LOT of blades while learning though, which really sucks if they were looking nice up to that point. You’ll also cut yourself, especially if you don’t wear gloves. The cuts are generally very clean and heal nicely, especially with obsidian. I wear glasses for my vision, but I would probably wear protective glasses otherwise. Apparently Ishi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishi) had a technique for dislodging shards of the material from his eyes (https://archive.org/details/yahiarcherysaxton00poperich/page/116/mode/2up?q=eye).
See Primitive Technology on Youtube.
Epistemic Status: Memory. I learnt this (weirdly) in an astrobiology course at University. And through long personal interest in prehistory.
I know that the stone heads themselves are flint. To get it into the shape you want, you have to hit the flint with a harder rock. You hit it for (I think)
hours[1][Edit: I think I was wrong about the Hours thing. In David Miles’ “Tale of the Axe” he claims it takes ~20 minutes for an experienced individual to Knapp a flint hand-axe.]
I imagine it would also be a lot easier if you leave near an area rich in the right type of rocks.
Earlier this year I visited Povery Point in Louisianna. The don’t really have any stone nearby at all, so they traded for different kinds with people from as far away as the great lakes.
People tend to underestimate the scale of inter-cultural prehistoric networks. Humans are exceptionally good at sourcing materials.
I really like the mental picture of everyone waiting on Bob to return from the wilds with the special stones for the hunting points (or whatever).
I do wonder how it affected the economics and process of training new toolmakers, though.