Neolithic Life
Dear Friends,
I never knew how interested I was in flint tools. It is AMAZING. If I had thought about them at all, I would have said, “Cave men used stone tools until they figured out how to make metal. Then, they used metal and archaeologists deduce (make-up) stone age facts from rocks.” Ha! There is so much more and archaeologists aren’t making things up (How dare you think that, Past Me!)
My professor demonstrated how to make flint tools and made at least five different flint tools in the space of half an hour. It was fascinating!
Here’s the run down. Flint formed 100–300 million years ago. The paleolithic and Neolithic people preferred mountain flint to river flint (I don’t know what is wrong with river flint, but there you go).
You can tell when flint has been worked by humans because hitting it makes a bulb and sends ripple lines down the ventral side of the flint. This never happens in nature (except for an occasional landslide, and you can still tell that it was natural because there aren’t others flakes around or the left over bits that humans leave).
The “dorsal” side can be smooth or have the impressions from where other flakes were taken off (note curve indent on the top of my flake). From these curved indents archaeologists can tell the method the ancient person used to flake off the pieces. There is the Pyramidal Technique, the Naviform Core, Pressure flaking, the Levallois technique and others; but my professor talks at a million miles per hour, so I didn’t catch everything.
I have a flake, which is an unworked piece of flint. If its length were double the width, it would be called a blade. This is when it is first broken off of the core, which is your original rock of flint that you picked up off the mountain side. The first flake/blade you break off is called the primary flake and one side is covered with the cortex. This is the limestone that covers the flint. Once you do lots of extra chipping to make a sharp end, you’ve made a tool. The tool can be an arrowhead, hand ax, regular ax (I held one made by somebody in the paleolithic period over 50,000 years ago!), a tiny saw, or maybe a bigger one, a notch tool, a perforator, a chopping tool, or whatever you think you need.
It is amazing! These people could walk outside and pick up a ROCK and make a usable tool. Well, they would actually pick up two rocks because you needed one to be a hammer. If you wanted to be an overachiever, you could use bone or antler for detail work on your flint tool.
Anyways, you can tell humans were doing flint work at a given site because they leave piles of flint bits where they were working. (This has a name that starts with a “d” but I didn’t spell it right in my notes, and Google can’t figure out what I’m trying to find. It sounds like “debi-tosh” and means “waste.”)
Also, hummus!
Hummus came around from the Neolithic revolution (you know, those domestication and agricultural developments a while back). It was great because chickpeas provide protein, tahini does something (don’t remember what), and you eat it with pita bread which is carbs! If you lived in Egypt you could drink beer with it (though it was really gross beer compared to today’s, apparently it was basically liquid bread with a little bit of alcohol) or wine if you were in the Levant (which is where I am). My bell-pepper is a bit anachronistic…
Finally, I have not had the chance to play with fire yet, but there is a paper coming out (or maybe it just came out?) that deduces how humans started to use fire. Most people have just assumed those ancestors of ours just played with random grassfires or lightning strikes until they mastered the technique. This makes perfect sense until you think about it: If there is grassfire, you’re running for water not sticking around to get burned! However, if you live in the Rift Valley of Africa, there is exposed lava that is not going anywhere and therefore not particularly dangerous to your wellbeing. What these researchers found was that all the earliest fire using settlements are located in close proximity to both water and lava! Isn’t that cool! it means people could practice manipulating fire in a setting where if they failed they could try again and not have to wait for a random lightning strike! I do not have the citation for this paper; my classmate promised to send it to me, and he hasn’t yet. Still super cool though, and makes total sense.
Those ancient ancestors of ours were smart cookies. They figured out fire and tools. Then 5,000 years ago people invented writing and started making records of stuff. This led to cell-phones and search engines. It’s amazing! Humans are amazing creatures.
Hope all is well with you! I promise I have been out and about, not just studying. More pictures will come :D
Have a blessed start to your Advent!
Pax!
Debbie
