Oldest Tool ... KNIFE ... 2nd Oldest ??

[Mark W Douglas]

The knife is considered 'humans' oldest tool from what I have read, heard, and been taught, but, what is the 2nd oldest tool? Notice I included both sexes!

Is it the hammer or what?

Just wondering!

Mark

" Knife Collectors Are Sharp People

"


------------------

 

[DC]

Intuitively, I'd say the hammer.

 

[chet]

Sorry, Probably digging stick first. Hammer second. Knife third. Ever see chimpanzees "fish" for termites with a stick. The first tools were simple and immediately at hand.

 

[P.J.]

Oldest tool, knife, second oldest tool, a sharpening stone for the knife. It could double as a hammer when needed.

------------------
P.J.
YES,it is sharp, just keep your fingers out of the way!
www.silverstar.com/turnermfg

 

[Cougar Allen]

The oldest sharp tools are flint flakes, pretty hard to hold onto without cutting yourself. Hand axes came next -- a hand axe is like an axe or hatchet blade presumably used without a handle (we don't know when they started putting handles on them; wood is less likely to survive the millenia than stone....)

A hand axe is a universal cutting and chopping tool, good for everything. I've often thought if I were to find myself naked in the wilderness the first tool I would make would be a hand axe. They're also easier to make than a real knife blade, especially if you can't find any easy knapping stone like flint or obsidian.

-Cougar Allen :{)

 

[Mark W Douglas]

Does a knife sharpener count as a tool? I don't know, I guess you could say it is! A stone, use as a hammer, too. Guess so!!

Mark

P.S. My wife told me it was a women, a tool to keep a man useful. Hmmm, I don't know how I should take that?



------------------

 

[Cougar Allen]

By the way, sharpening stones came very late in prehistory, Neolithic rather than Paleolithic. Old Stone Age tools were chipped and when they got dull they rechipped the edge. The discovery that stone could be ground as well as chipped was one of the most useful discoveries of the Neolithic Revolution, not only making resharpening easier but enabling them to use tougher stone like jade that couldn't be chipped.

-Cougar Allen :{)

 

[P.J.]

Cougar:
I got to look at a couple of hand ax heads, chipped from a green colored stone, that were turned up during plowing on a farm in Denmark, got to handle them too. They looked like they would cover a number of jobs like cutting, skinning, and of course chopping, both had enough radius to the edge to work as skinners.
Both also had pretty good edges for being buried for a few hundred years.

------------------
P.J.
YES,it is sharp, just keep your fingers out of the way!
www.silverstar.com/turnermfg

 

[SammyB]

I thought man's oldest tool was the one used by Adam in the creation of Cain and Abel

Adam: Stand back honey, I don't know how big this thing is going to get...

 

[Bob Irons]

Didn't God need a knife to get that rib out first? I'd just assumed that man inherited that original tool from God!

Ain't inheritance a wonderful thing!!!

SammyB may have the 2nd oldest tool there.

 

[tknife]

2nd oldest tool: A credit card in the cavemans name to keep his custom knife purchases hidden from the wife!

 

[Yekim]

Hmmm....

I would assume that the hammer was first, but I think to qualify as a tool, an object has to be modified from its natural for, and a rock as a hammer doesn't qualify. Rocks were used to cruch heavy thigh bones so the marrow could be reached. The sharp pointy shattered bone fragments could have actually been the first tool, even if accidenally made. One could surmise that a clean miss of the bone and subsequent striking of the anvil stone could have created the first knives.

But then again I could be wrong...Let's ask Dick Clark, rumor has it he was there...

..

YeK

 

[CD Fleischer]

Fire

 

[Mark W Douglas]

Oh man, you all 'CUT' me up!

I know, that was bad

Mark

" Knife Collectors Are Sharp People

"
MOST OF TIME !!


------------------

 

[larry harley]

it was not the knife. it was a stick!!
harley

 

[Sal Glesser]

Yek - that "clean miss" of the bone might also have created fire?

Hi Larry.

Isn't a club a tool? even though it only be a stick. Seems to me what makes it a tool is the use of the object as a tool and not whether it was modified to be a tool. If a stick (that was once used as a tool) lays in the forrest, and there is no one around to "use" it, is it still a tool?

If a mans speaks in the forrest and there is no wife around to hear him, is he still wrong? (sorry)

If modification is required, then the tool used to make the first knife would be the first tool, predateing the knife it made.

Semantics can be grand fun. intersting thread.
sal

 

[Mark W Douglas]

Sorry for Double Post

[This message has been edited by Mark W Douglas (edited 01 April 1999).]

 

[Mark W Douglas]

Good 'POINT' SAL !!


Makes some sense to me .....

Mark



------------------

" Knife Collectors Are Sharp People "

 

[James Mattis]

A knife is the oldest known tool that is made by human hands, and not found as-is in nature. It is also the tool that makes all other subsequent technology possible.

There are a limited number of things one can make without a knife, using unmodified rocks as hammers and abrasives - to separate plant fibers to make a rope or string of some sort, or to scrape away wood to make a pointed stick. One can use a pointed stick to dig for roots and edible creepy-crawlies, or use it as a crude spear.

Recently they've dug up some wooden throwing spears, from a peat deposit in Germany, that are 400,000 years old - Homo Erectus vintage. Traces of knife making go back now about 2,500,000 years. There is now one chimpanzee, named Kanzi, who, with lessons from an anthropologist, is making some very crude stone knives.

------------------
- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com

 

[Mark W Douglas]

Thanks James ...

The key phrase is "made by human hands".

A buddy of mine told me it is even stated in the Bible that the knife is man's oldest tool, though I haven't ran across it in there as of yet. A rock used as a hammer isn't hand made, but again, if it were a sharp rock, you could 'cut' with it like a knife!

Mark