Ancient knife makers shared their knowledge (via Smithaonin)

[MT Borg]

Read the linked article and Clovis spear points were so similar they must have shared their knowledge and technology with other tribes.
The knowledge I have gained here from you all seems to imitate the ancient knife/spear makers. Share the knowledge.

"New high-tech 3D computer analysis of 50 spear points made more than 10,000 years ago by North America’s mysterious Clovis people has revealed the stone points display an astounding symmetry despite having been found in caches as far apart as Maryland, Arizona and Colorado. The only explanation for such symmetry across these vast distances, explains Smithsonian anthropologist Dennis Stanford, is that the method of creating the points was handed down from person to person"

 

[not2sharp]

Well, it is either a very similar method for making them or just the result of a very similar method for identifying and classifying them. There is always the chance that there were many different types of spear points and that only the ones that looked like "Clovis spear points" were cataloged as such.

n2s

 

[mete]

I stopped taking "clovis" seriously when I found that the "Clovis" archeologists stopped digging when the hit the clovis layer !! They KNEW [???] there was nothing before Clovis ! That's science ?

 

[Bill DeShivs]

It could also be that certain points were found to WORK BETTER through trial and error.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

I'm sorry, by as far as I am concerned, that article is pseudo-science...using a conclusion to support a hypothesis.
That is basically like saying the wheel must be the product of passing knowledge from one person to the next...after all, they are all the same shape and rotate the same way.

Stone breaks in a predictable way designated by stone type. This is usually a conchoidal fracture. Break one in AZ or in MD and it will chip the same. A spear is a wedge that needs to be pointed enough to pierce, but strong enough to survive use. Again, 1/2" thick and 4" long by 2" wide ( just random numbers) is the same everywhere.

I would have found it more interesting if a spear point was vastly different in various regions. That would indicate a difference in materials available or game hunted.

 

[Bo T]

Good article. Not pseudo-science. The premises (evidence) supports the conclusion.

 

[james terrio]

If knowledge had not been passed both down from (and across to) person-to-person, we'd never have made it into the stone age, much less out of it. Technology very rarely grows by random leaps and bounds because one person (or several individuals on separate continents) was suddenly born a genius. Historically speaking, it tends to grow and develop at a snail's pace as people, generations and communities interact with one another and share ideas.

Obviously certain shapes (and materials) come to the fore simply because they work, and others fall by the wayside because they don't. That doesn't preclude people communicating about them and sharing information. I saw a copper age knife in a museum in Green Bay that was a near-perfect full scale model of what we would now call a Loveless drop-point profile; the same exhibit traced copper ore and finished goods from Northern WI all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It didn't just levitate there, and I suspect there may have been some chit-chat along the way

Many will claim, and I tend to agree, that the notion of deeply xenophobic "nations" guarding secrets from each other is really quite modern. There have been Viking artifacts found as far abroad as Russia Turkey and elsewhere in the middle East, and vice-versa... which raises some interesting questions about who invented pattern-welded steel when, among other things.

Then again, maybe ancient aliens dropped all this stuff off just kick-start evolution and mess with our heads.

 

[james terrio]

"The only explanation for such symmetry across these vast distances, explains Smithsonian anthropologist Dennis Stanford, is that the method of creating the points was handed down from person to person"

Well, no it's not the "only" explanation...

There is always the chance that there were many different types of spear points and that only the ones that looked like "Clovis spear points" were cataloged as such.

Unless there's been a pretty intense conspiracy over the last couple hundred years, that seems rather unlikely. There are examples looking almost exactly like that from nearly every culture and time period on Earth - regardless of material. From "Clovis" man to the latest Cold Steel and BudK catalogs. That's because they just plain work for stabbing things.

But again... I see no reason to scoff at the idea that people taught each other how to make 'em once they figured it out themselves. No one is just born knowing this stuff. Even "lower" primates watch their parents use sticks to dig bugs out of holes and whatnot, and start doing it themselves.

That is basically like saying the wheel must be the product of passing knowledge from one person to the next...after all, they are all the same shape and rotate the same way.

Do we still "re-invent the wheel" every generation in every area? No. Of course it was developed in different places independently, but of course it was also passed on from one person to the next.

I guess I just don't get the "controversy" here. What am I missing?