Edged tool vs. fire...which is Mankind's most important tool?

Considering this is a bladeforum and people still consider fire as a contender, I'd say the answer is pretty obvious :rolleyes:
 
Fire is not a "tool", at best it's a natural resource that was discovered. Early man did not create fire from nothing having never seen it before the same way hand held tools were.
 
heresthedeal said:
stone tools and controlled use of fire is(from what I've read) almost a million years apart,(may only be 500,000 years) but no where near close.
first stone tool manufacturing evidence. (i know its wikipedia, but this ain't university either)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_tools

first evidence of the use of fire or control of fire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans

if it wasn't for the use of edged tools we wouldn't have had the ability to get the large amounts of meat/protein to grow that big brain that let us use/control fire.
they weren't making arrow heads or spear points they were hacking off chunks of meat so they could take it away and eat it with out getting eaten by all the large carnivores that were roaming around.
wouldn't have taken long to figure out that sitting there beside a dead animal ripping and tearing and gnawing at it was a death wish. YMMV but that's my humble opinion and it seems the opinion of a bunch of archaeologists.
Click to expand...

Unless we started out with the big beautiful brain that we all have today.

If what is speculated to be "millions of years" is actually just thousands (or hundreds) then all the basic tools would have seen use relatively quickly.
 
Joshua J. said:
Unless we started out with the big beautiful brain that we all have today.

If what is speculated to be "millions of years" is actually just thousands (or hundreds) then all the basic tools would have seen use relatively quickly.
Click to expand...

ya that's probably it.
 
Last edited:
Well, edged tools were a progression. You got your hand axe, basically a pointy rock. Someone breaks one, hey "look at this s**t, it cuts better". You start breaking them on purpose. You start finding the best s**t to break.

Still, they are finding that fire had a part in our evolution. They believe Homo Erectus had fire now, and that cooking food allowed our jaw and teeth to be "daintier" which allowed for increased brain size.

Fire allowed us to live further north and to subsist on grains which, when uncooked, have enzymes which hinder digestion, so that they can try to go straight through your digestive tract.

Animals use tools, and probably realize they can be pointy sometimes. No animal I know of uses fire.

I find this stuff kinda interesting. They are now finding that we have just as many genes common with the Bonobo as the Chimp. Bonobos are much less aggressive than Chimps. They copulate face to face and the female is always receptive without any clues as to when she is fertile.

Females "roping in" a man to form a family unit, as this is the only way to make sure the offspring is his, allows the female to give birth to a child a bit earlier which is more helpless and needing more prolonged care. Thus a human female can birth a child with a big ol' head and a big ol' brain through her limited sized pelvis by birthing earlier.

So, yeah, the women made us act civilized by offering sex then, as now.

This plays into my theory that all of civilization, from fire to splitting the atom, is just a complicated scenario to get said sex.

I can see a guy who was a little bit less big and strong starting a fire and saying "Come over here where it's warm, baby".
 
I'm not sure there's really a wrong answer. Edged tools are important. You can tell because almost all life comes equipped with them naturally. Controlled use of fire, however, is one of the main things that sets homo sapiens apart from other species and allows us to thrive in hostile environments.
 
Great question. Mankind's most important tool is the human brain (or is it the fingers/hands?) and ability to create edged tools and fire, and to cooperate in the hunt and later farming. I believe the brain developed and grew as humans gained greater access to sources of protein. I don't know what is the most important tool today verse prehistoric times. In a perfect Garden of Eden environment neither edged tools or fire are necessary. For me, I need my daily cup of coffee so edged tools are vital to harvesting the beans and fire to brew it, and the ancient round wheel design on a vehicle to bring the roasted beans to my local market.

Ancient Weapons Point to First Use of Fire for Tools?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090813-first-fire-tools.html
 
Okay. Le me throw another monkey wrench into the machinery by saying that perhaps SPOKEN LANGUAGE and the ability to engage in and communicate abstract thought was our most important "invention." ;)
 
Mankind's most important tool is WOMAN. She must be a tool. She does all of the work around here.
Sonny
 
Fire is what gave mankind the ability to create cutting tools. Fire created the stones capable of being modified into cutting tools, through volcanic activity.

But I do not think fire vs. blade is an analogous comparison. Fire is a natural resource created by nature, mankind overtime simply learned to control it then to manufacture it. A more analogous comparison would be blade to cordage, or blade to hammer/bludgeon etc...

Mankind can live w/ out cutting tools, it would be very difficult but it could be done.

Mankind would not, could not survive w/ out fire.
 
Last edited:
I think some are missing the point of the OP. Not wich was first but wich was most important. with out fire the Bronze.Iron &, Modern age, would not be possible. Every item we come in contact from paper, plastics, metal are all made with fire some where in the manufacturing prosess.
 
Okay, i'll give it a shot.

Without Fire: We would still be using basic flint or stone tools, since ALL metals require some degree of firing to be shaped. We would be essentially stuck in the stone age eating raw or dehydrated foods with no hope of industrialization. The knives we DID have would be very bad

Without Bladed tools: We would never have mastered agriculture or manufacturing. Our use of fire would have been confined to subsistence only as we wouldn't be able to adequately form or shape the basic tools needed to industrialize without blades to shape them

These two are both intricately intertwined in almost every technological task.

if i had to choose, i'd say fire, because without fire, humanity would be stuck in a much smaller part of the world... we can still hunt with rocks, but we'd freeze without fire.
 
I would say FIRE is our most useful tool. Without it, we wouldn't be able to manufacture edge tools. In it's most basic form, a campfire allows us to cook food, smoke food for preservation, and harden rudimentary spear tips as well as stay warm.

Humans wouldn't be the way we are today without edged tools OR fire. I'm not sure that you can really choose "which one is more useful".

Timbit
 
Agree

When roughing it out, without an edged tool starting a fire is much harder

Without fire making an edged tool is much harder

So the 2 are equal
 
jdm61 said:
Okay. Le me throw another monkey wrench into the machinery by saying that perhaps SPOKEN LANGUAGE and the ability to engage in and communicate abstract thought was our most important "invention." ;)
Click to expand...

That I tend to agree with. I tend to think cooperation and community remain our greatest evolutionary advantages.
 
Can't argue with that... that ability to say things like "Hey, i'm gonna scare that rabbit. When i do, you whack it with that stick" is a total game changer..

forget tools. Cooperation is what makes us deadly.

Look at the other top predators. Wolves, Lions, Hyena, etc... most major predators are communal. We're just better at it
 
I don't know... In the right climate and with rapid processing of game/foraging you don't even need a cooking fire. To work with a greater variety of tools and materials you must have fire (and consider anatomically modern humans evolved entirely in the company of fire). Without it we might have turned out quite a bit different in terms of dentition and digestive processes but we would still be using edged tools. Heck, monkeys can learn to use rocks, clubs, twigs, and water to help process food. They already search for rocks with specific characteristics, at some point they could conceivably learn to seek out and use use rocks with sharp edges.

Good question. Edged tools needed to get our ancestors up and running, fire needed to advance the species to where we are today. Virtually our entire advanced society is dependent on controlled combustion in one form or another.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top