The history of the knife? Wow. That's quite a topic.
A tool is an object specifically designed, deliberately made, and purposefully used for a specific task or tasks.
Amongst animals, you can find a few weak examples of primitive tool use. Sea Otters, for example,
sometimes use a rock to break the shell of other animals they want to eat. But it's a long way from
breaking a shell with a rock to launching a communications satellite. Baboons, when attacked, will sometimes pick up and throw sticks or rocks at their agressors. But it's a long way from throwing rocks to throwing guided, intercontinental, balistic misiles with muliple, high-yielding nuclear warheads. In either of these cases, there's not just a missing a link or two here, folks. There's enough missing chain to reach from the Earth to the Moon....
and back....
several times!
A tool is an object specifically designed for and deliberately made for a specific purpose or purposes. The sea otter's rock or the Babbon's rock are really just a found objects.
The closest example I've found to an animal designing and creating a tool is a spider weaving a web. Each time a spider builds a new web at a new location, the design has to be adapted to the
mechanics of that location. But, I am told that experts in these sorts of things can tell what kind of spider built a specific web based on design traits that remain constant. So, apparently there's less creativity and less innovation here that one initially might think.
Our use of tools clearly differentiates humans from the rest of the creation. No other animal
specifically designs tools. No other animal deliberately makes tools. And no other animal purposefully uses tools in any way that even begins to approach what humans do.
Our use of tools is part of our fulfillment of our God-given mission to subdue and rule over the
creation.
Like that Sea Otter, Adam's first proto-tool was probably a rock that he pounded with. Maybe, one
day, he was pounding on one rock with another, perhaps trying to break open some nuts or
something. As Adam pounded one rock against the other, maybe part of one of the rocks broke off
leaving a sharp edge.
Maybe Adam reached down and picked up the broken shard out of curiosity. Maybe he cut his finger
on the sharp edge. Most animals would be frightened and would run away from this thing that had attacked and injured them. Others might try to fight back. But Adam was not an animal. He was
different than any animal. Adam realizes that the rock had not attacked him. Maybe he even thought
that, if more carefully handled, this sharp-edged rock fragment could be useful.
Maybe he even kept pounding to make more of these useful edges. Maybe, with experimentation, he
even figured out the ideal way to strike the rocks to make nice edges. Thus, Adam's first
purpose-built tool could easily have been a knife. Whether it was the first or not, edged cutting tools, knives, were doubtlessly among the earliest tools man deliberately made and used.
The knife was one of man's earliest assertions of man's difference from the rest of creation.
The knife is a very simple tool, really. It can result from simply knocking two rocks together.
Sometimes, this happens naturally leaving simple knives just laying around waiting to be used. But,
to this day, no other animal makes or even uses even primative knives. As simple and as basic as it is, the knife remains a powerful assertion of man's uniqueness in the creation.
But we humans did not stop with the simple knife. Since chipping off that first stone edge, we've
been constantly working to improve the knife and adapt it to specific tasks. It's a long way from that first stone chip to today's sophisticated alloys, deliberate blade profiles, and precision machined lock mechanisms. This is man subduing the creation, bringing it under his control.
Finally, while some other animals may, for example, gather and store nuts for the winter, humans alone really collect. Humans alone are interested in preserving objects purely for their own sake and in organizing them and studying them. You don't see a squirrel, for example, trying to collect one of every kind of nut in the world. A squirrel's interest in nut collection is motivated only by his stomach. Collection is also part of how we distinguish ourselves from the rest of the animals. It's part of humans taking control of the creation.
By collecting knives and studying knives, I am reminded of God's special mission and special
provisions for us. I am reminded of our uniqueness in the creation.
By collection and studying knives, I celebrate the fact that I am man, the tool-user, and special in this creation and special before God, not by my own accomplishment but by God's own design.
