Wed
14
Sep
2011
The 10 Oldest Survival Tools
Cave Painting Anthropos
Tuesday, Sept 13th 2011 at 11:24pm
If you look down at your keyboard you'll notice that you're sporting a fine pair of opposable thumbs. Not only are those dandy digits helpful for pounding down nachos, they, along with our big
sexy brains, allowed us humans to create all sorts of useful tools that helped us leap to the top of the food chain (sub-par leg structure and all). As an ode to our dexterous and ingenuitive forebearers, BearSurvival.Com has put together a list of mankind’s ten oldest survival tools of record for your viewing pleasure.
10. Canteen - About 60,000 years ago. Ostrich eggs, which are incredibly strong, were punctured on one side, and used to carry water. Think of them as an early Nalgene bottles, but instead of having anti-microbial properties, they added calcium to your diet. Good bye brittle bones, hello kidney stones.http://news.discovery.com/history/stone-age-eggshells.html
9. Bow
and Arrow
- 64,000 years ago. These babies really took hunting and warfare to the next level. The bow and arrow allowed man to hunt animals and conquer nations at a distance, with much greater range
and accuracy than other earlier projectile tools like slings and spears. Far superior to the sling in most respects, this tool has been used for millennia and remained the predominant long
distance weapon of choice until it was surpassed by more modern guns developed in the last three hundred years or so. Quite an impressive track record!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11086110
8. Sling
- Around 64,000 years ago. The sling was developed roughly around the same time as the bow and arrow, though by some accounts the bow could be the love-child of the two ends of a sling being
stretched taught with a stick at a date well after the sling’s first use. Aside from helping our early ancestors with getting food instead of being food, the sling can also be credited with
giving our progenitors some of their first lessons in the effective application of leverage, aerodynamics, wind drag, stored energy, and gravity when using tools.
The most notable use of the sling in recorded history is the biblical recording of the boy David defeating the mighty warrior Goliath. As mentioned above though, the sling is an inferior tool in
comparison to the bow with few exceptions. Even still, we have record of the sling being used by Roman armies effectively, with lead shot apparently capable of penetrating body armor. The hand
sling was last used in modern warfare in WWI, where it was used by soldiers to lob grenades.
http://slinging.org/index.php?page=the-use-of-the-sling-among-the-ancients---walter-hawkins
Bone Awls
7.
Needles
- Really old. They were originally made out of bone or ivory. and were used for (you guessed it) sewing. Ancient tailors used flax thread to sew more form fitting clothes out of fur,
leather, or even leaves, allowing for increased dexterity and warmth on the move. As you can imagine, nothing is worse than hunting wild bore with your pants around your
ankles.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-neanderthalensis
6. Awls
- Really old. Basically a BIG needle. These were used to poke holes in animal hide, after which the awl was removed and sinew or other binding materials could then be forced through the
holes to make some sweet new buck-skin pants. Awls were made by taking bones or sticks and pounding or shaving them into finer points.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-neanderthalensis
5.
Blades
- Really old. Not blades as in a metal knife, those came much later. These blades started out as stone cylinders or knife-shaped rocks that were pounded with other rocks to make them sharper
through more refined stone-tool making processes such as knapping. Blades are considered a more modern “middle” stone age tool and the earliest ones of record date back to somewhere between two
and five hundred thousand years ago. Blades can be defined as being stone flakes that are at least twice as long as they are wide, with fairly parallel sides and at least two ridges on the outer
side.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2009/04/02-02.html
4. Fire
(on purpose)
- Really, really old. While the exact time in which humans learned to control fire is still open to debate, most experts in the archaeological community are willing to agree that man has
controlled fire for at least 400,000 years, though some evidence suggests that it may have been as much as 1.5 million years ago that man began to use fire. This was obviously a huge step for
mankind as the use of fire as an external energy source made it easier to stay warm, make more sophisticated tools, and also get more caloric value out of food sources for less work by having
heat from the fire perform some of the digestive work ahead of consumption. And to this day, no single thing is more entertaining to adolescent young men than fire. Someday a good fire app will
be made for the iPod, and when it is, thousands will die of starvation.
http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/hb/hb-interview2c.shtml
3. Javalin - Really, really old. These haven’t changed much over the years. Take something that isn’t you, make it pointy, and use it to keep the wild boar you are trying to kill from goring you. This is not the same as a spear with a steal or rock head, those came later. Archaeological record dates back to around 400,000 years for these tools as well, though as wood doesn’t preserve well, these could be the oldest tools known to mankind as some primate species have the capacity to make them. These are still useful today when fighting off aggressive marshmallows.
Hand-axe
2. Hand-axe - Really, really, really old. This tool separated the men from the apes. The hand axe is basically a rock with sides that have been planed to a point. These were not as refined as the blades produced in later times through more advanced processes, but merely crudely sharpened stones. It seems that most hand axes have a sharp border all around, and there is no firm agreement about their use. Experts hypothesize that they could have been used as cutting and chopping tools, digging implements, flake cores, traps, or even for a purely ritual significance.
1. Oldowan Chopping Tools - REALLY, really, really old. These are the earliest tools of record. The oldest examples of record are dated to be from around 2.6 million year ago. These primitive stone tools were largely single faced chipped stone implements with a sharp edge produced by banging a heavier rock into a smaller one until a sharp edge was formed when part of the smaller stone flaked off.
