Anthropology and Becker Knives

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Lawrence Helm

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Jul 24, 2014
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The predominate view among anthropologists is that homo sapiens as a species has been in existence for about 200,000 years. So what he has been doing for that period is important to us. For example, I wouldn't be going out on much of a limb to say that our ancestors for the bulk of the 190,000 years we have no recorded information about spent most of that time walking. So in choosing hiking as one of my main interests "might" have provided some benefit that I don't know about. If our bodies were design to walk and I do a lot of it, it can't hurt.

Interestingly, the dog, canis familiaris, as a species has been in existence about the same length of time. There is no evidence that he has been domesticated quite that long, but he might have been. And we know that having a dog can increase your sense of well being and add years to your life. Did the ancestors who got along best with dogs have an evolutionary advantage over those who didn't? Very probably. Dogs helped us hunt, they guarded our campsites, they stayed back and guarded the women and old people while they "gathered" as the men took the dogs best suited for it and went out hunting.

Also, we know that there was an evolutionary advantage to growing very old because the old people could teach the young about where the water could be found, where the game herds moved to, what herbs were good for what, and how best to make things like spears and knives. Tribes with old people like that had an evolutionary advantage over the tribes that didn't.

Now it might seem that I am reaching very far in looking for a rationalization for buying so many knives, but having a lot of tools and weapons would provide an evolutionary advantage to our ancestors. We know that a big advantage occurred when the bow and arrow were developed, and any improvement in that system would provide an evolutionary advantage to those who had it. But how is that going to provide an evolutionary advantage in this day and age? There might be a slight advantage in giving we who have a lot of really good ones a sense of well being, and after all we are behaving in a way best suited to our evolutionary forebears and their inclinations. Whether having knives will enable us to live longer in the same way that having dogs will, perhaps not, but maybe. And having the best knives of all the knives (Becker knives) might give us an even greater sense of well being thereby inhibiting disease and enabling us to live longer. :yawn:

Just a thought:barf:

Lawrence
 
I would agree but for differing reasons. Between the BK9 and BK4 no black-shrouded scythe-wielding weirdo will be coming around here!

In seriousness I think the reason for the feeling of well-being is from economic comfort over the specific things that create that feeling. Which in no way minimizes the importance of those items.
 
I refuse to die until I have all the knives.
Hence, ongoing knife production guarantees immortality. :)
 
I read an interesting study about dogs being smarter than apes. The premise of the argument was that "back in the day" dogs learned to form a symbiotic relationship with man thereby increasing their survivability. Apes, although cognitively smarter, remained independent and did not flourish like the dog. As far as knives go; it's natural man, go with it. We were originally hunter gatherers and you are just gathering tools. I doubt that back in the day if one of our ancestors saw a piece of flint or chert that would have been perfect for an axe, spear, knife, tool, etc... he would have walked past it and said "oh I already have one in that size". As far as knives providing an evolutionary advantage; they don't. Our civilization is pseudo past the point of (non-electronic) hand tools providing an advantage. If some catastrophic event happened that negated all electronics and sent us back to being a third world country, then the multitude of Beckers you have would provide a community tool cache that you could use to support a more primitive community. You would have a good base of tools to have the "advantage" over less prepared communities. There you go.
 
So, is this thread about the evolution of man, the evolution of knives, the evolution of dogs or the inevitability of SHTF?


This question is rhetorical of course.....long may I live now that I have Beckers in my gear.
 
146!!! that was the number I was gonna pick! Damn you Psyop! Now I'm gonna be up all night trying to think of another one.:grumpy:
 
You almost lost me, but I persevered. It's a bit of a stretch, but I see how what you mean. If cavemen would've had Beckers they'd have definitely exterminated those damned sasquatch. Then there'd be no decent television.
 
If cavemen would have had Beckers we would be extinct.

Think about it, Some caveman clubs some grubby cavebroad over the head and makes cavebabies, a couple millenia later here you are. You try that crap with a BK-2 and you've just splattered brains all over the place, no toasty unconcious grubby cavebroad, no cavebabies no you. Plus, who's gonna clean that mess of brains up?
 
Murphnuge said:
You almost lost me, but I persevered. It's a bit of a stretch, but I see how what you mean. If cavemen would've had Beckers they'd have definitely exterminated those damned sasquatch. Then there'd be no decent television.
Click to expand...

Which calls for my one Big Foot story. I was on a hike with my wife and at last two of my kids about 36 or 37 years ago in the Cleveland National Forest. I have a very poor sense of direction but thanks to having been trained by the USMC in maps and compass, I was (almost) always confident about where we were going. We got to one spot where the map said there was a trail, but we couldn't see one. I squatted down and could see the old hard-packed trail underneath the brush. It had grown over the trail. Then up ahead I saw someone coming toward us; so I said, "come one, let's crawl underneath. I see someone so the trail is open up ahead. So we got down on our hands and knees and crawled along this over grown trail until we got to an open spot. It seemed further along than the spot where I'd seen the guy coming toward us, but the trail was overgrown further on as well.

As we stood there the others interrogated me. "Are you sure you saw some one?" "Yes!"

"What did he look like?" "I don't know I just saw his outline. . . Hey wait. I just assumed he was my size [5' 10"]. If he was larger he could have been further along. Let's keep going."

I got complaints from my kids who wanted to turn back, but my wife was game so on we went. We did finally come out on an (uncovered) trail; so what had I seen. I occasionally looked for tracks on the trail as we crawled along but never saw any. Neither my kids nor my wife had seen what I saw; so my kids (regularly teased by their father) accused me of making it up. I insisted I had seen someone. Then (always ready to tease my kids) after a bit I said I had figured it out: Big Foot. He probably wasn't on the trail but crossing it. I looked up and saw him. He saw me and stopped for a moment, and we lost sight of him when we went back down onto our hands and knees. My kids scoffed, but when I insisted that I wasn't kidding, they did look round about more than they would on a typical hike.

Since I wasn't totally kidding, what did I see? I don't know. If it was a man, what was he doing out there? There was no trail crossing the one we were on where I saw him, and the chaparral was dense. Someone could bull their way through it, but it wouldn't have been pleasant, and if a man would (I would have thought) have made a lot of noise doing it. Of course something larger would have made noise as well, or would he?

My son likes those Big-foot-hunting "reality" shows. I'm not really saying I saw a big foot. All I insist on is that I saw something or someone. :eek: :ghost:

Lawrence
 
so it turns out, as it happens, that Ethan is SO OLD, that he invented knives, and is in fact, a cave man. just witness his man cave sometime :D
 
Guyon said:
That explains the mastodon spare ribs.
Click to expand...

I prefer St. Louis style ribs.

Which, for those uneducated heathen, is spare ribs with the skirt meat and rib tips removed to make a nice rectangular rack of ribs. Way better tasting than back ribs and cook more uniformly than regular spare ribs. They are the evolutionary pinnacle of ribs.
 
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ribs.jpg
 
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