The first tools used by humans were often made with stones
Over a period of 3 million years humans used a variety of stones a few different ways
One of the first ways was a process called flint knapping
where a piece of Flint will be chipped and shaped into a sharp blade
Another method that was used was grinding stones down
crafting them into the desired shape or blade
So I met with Gil an archaeologist at the University of Minnesota
So, I want some stone tools
Starting 3.3 million years ago
humans were using cutting edges as their main way of interacting with the environment
so they would strike one stone with another, hopefully the one that they're striking with does not break
It tends to be a more harder stone, heterogeneous or crystallyne rock
Where the stone that they're striking would be homogenous, without a crystalline matrix in it
So when you insert a crack by striking at, The crack goes where you want it to
So you can control where the fracture happens
So flintknapping, making your stone tools, is very much an intentional act
So this is what's called a hand axe or biface: two sides, two faces
This is I think what we should try to have you make and also something that
has somewhat of a dull back edge so that you can easily fit it in your hands
I learned how to flintknap barehanded
and that's good, you have much more control over the stone
but then you always do cut yourself and so I figured we probably don't want to have
blood on the screen
So there's certain rules to flint knapping in terms of the angles
you have to follow. So if you want to break the stone
you need to strike one surface
that is adjacent to an edge with another surface that is less than 90 degrees
So the the angle of attack is from this direction
to vertical and from vertical this way you don't get the crack
so you want to have a...
that type of direction
Learning how hard to hit is one of the big tricks in flintknapping
and it changes depending upon your stone
If you can try to make a biface or hand axe for chopping down a tree
So I might want to think about this side being the place to grip
and then working this edge as an edge for fine working
and then maybe leaving this one slightly thicker if you want to do a more chopping gesture
So this is actually a karibu antler
Using antler allows you to make thinner flakes, essentially
So... I'll start to flip it back and forth now to try to get a bifacial edge on it
see if you can sort of hold it in your hand
I usually do it this way
when I'm teaching people how to hold it to begin with
because you know where your own fingers are
and so you can essentially aim for the tip of your pinky
and even if you hit your pinky is not really going to hurt you very much
but if it's underneath the stone then you're hitting there
and you think about it as a little round gesture
Safety first
Good
Harder
So maybe we'll start going this way again to to bring the edge
so you can kind of bring this up that way
Good, excellent
Am I best off just using this by hand or...?
Yeah, i think so but this should, you know, give you some cutting power
Thanks Gil for showing me how to flintknap
I have a stone tool!