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

I hate to include this but this was an argument a while back and here are the facts.

The oldest Human tool according to most scientists is the hammer or a bludgeoning tool of sorts. This is based on marks found on femur bones of large animals showing that they where used to hit and pound. I guess you could use the analogy that is was easier to bludgeon an animal to death rather than try to stab it with a make shift knife. But it would seem the knife would make for a quicker kill. Either way the argument lives. I prefer to think the knife is the oldest tool.

Also when this argument was in the heat of debate on another forum (Rec.argue.any.damn.thing), I made the argument that a hammer may not be considered a tool. Don't get me wrong here but in todays society the hammer is very obviously a tool but is a stick a tool? If I beat you with a stick it would be called a weapon in the US but in other countries it is still called a stick.

Now further argument would dictate that by changing the original function of an item by merely changing it's intended use, like beating a piece of meat with a bone to soften it, would not make this item a tool. However taking a bone and fashioning it into a cutting tool, in my mind, would make it a tool as not only was it's original intended use changed but also it's shape was changed to preform a new task.

Now this was the basis of my argument. Therefor the knife was the first tool under my definition.

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Mike Turber
BladeForums Site Owner and Administrator
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Ahhh, I see
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Mark

 
Numerous nonhuman animals use unmodified sticks and rocks as tools, not just apes but bears, raccoons, even some birds. That's why when scientists talk about tool-using as a distinguishing human characteristic they define a tool as something made, not just picked up off the ground. No doubt our ancestors did use sticks as clubs before they started making blades, since apes do it. It was the knife that first distinguished hominids as toolusers from other animals.

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
Folks, if you're interested in this topic, I would *highly, highly* recommend that you get or borrow a book called, "Making Silent Stones Speak: Human Evolution and the Dawn of Technology" by Kathy D. Schick, and her husband Nicholas Toth.

These two top rated archaeologists not only have spent a lifetime looking into the q's being discussed here, but actually spent 5 years in Africa living off the stone tools they made just to see if some of their hypothesis were correct. They even butchered an elephant with stone flakes.
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They make the important point that *tools* are anything outside of self used to accomplish a task. *Tools* can be modified for usage or unmodified. As Cougar mentions, there are numerous non-human animals that use various tools from sticks to rocks to mud etc. *Artifacts* are items that are altered *by humans* for use. Thus, not only is the stone knife an artifact, but so are the chips that come off it in the making.
That becomes an important point later on, because evidently a lot of large altered rocks that may have been thought handaxes, hammers etc may have really been tools used to make the tools that were sought after in the form of sharp flakes.

Anyway, getting more back to the point, it's probably impossible to determine the 1st tool, since to do that one would necessarily have to go to *pre-human* history. Personally, I think Larry Harley is _probably_ right when he mentions sticks as being first by a good long period, but if anybody wanted to argue that mud using animals and insects were technically first, I'd not challenge that assertation.
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mps
 
If we really want to get into this.... Chimps strip the leaves off a twig to make a tool to stick into a termite nest (the termites bite the intruder, then the chimp pulls the stick out of the nest and eats the termites). So that's making a tool, in a primitive way. They do that in the wild without being taught to by humans.

They discard the stick when they're done with it, don't carry it around with them to use on the next termite nest they find. It seems likely that when hominids started making flint flake blades they probably discarded them and made new ones every time they wanted to cut something, though.... Maybe the step that most sharply distinguished our ancestors from other animals was not making tools but keeping them and carrying them around with them. Would they have carried a tool in their hands to keep it??? I doubt it. So they wouldn't have started keeping tools until they invented the shoulder bag or fanny pack, or at least the lanyard (knots??? How much intelligence does it take to discover the concept of knotting??? Or sewing/lacing???) Of course that would require a blade to make. Chimps don't make blades ... so maybe we're back to the blade as the first "human" tool.

I put "human" in quotes because depending on how you define human you probably would not call those first blade-using hominids human because they didn't have other human characteristics like language, fire, etc. Fire came very late in hominid history, not until our ancestors moved from Africa into colder Europe (it was definitely used for warmth first, cooking later). It's hard to say definitely when language developed, and it was likely a gradual process anyway. Recent examination of Neanderthal fossils suggests they didn't have the anatomy to make a large variety of sounds, suggesting true language may not have existed prior to modern man, homo sapiens sapiens (Cro-Magnon man was essentially indistinguishable from anyone alive today). On the other hand Neanderthal man, whether you class him as a separate species, homo neanderthalis, or a mere subspecies, homo sapiens neanderthalis, (that's a matter of great controversy) had some other characteristics we consider uniquely human, though, especially religion (ritual burials).
Could an creature capable of ritual burials be without language? When we try to decide questions like that we go beyond where hard science can take us, at present at least, and opinions tend to be based on prejudices more than on hard evidence....

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
Well, I notice that in the orig. q, Mark Douglas did specify 'humans', so nix to birds and muddabbers. But still, I'd be willing to argue that the original humanoid tools are never going to be found because they were made of stuff that was vegetative and thus rotted away, or were *tools* only in the sense that they were outside of self and allowed primitive man to do something that he could not have naturally done given only what he was born with. (Man's greatest tool has always been his brain, but that IS self.)

An interesting thing is which came first, man's desire for a club or for a digging stick? I'd hope that it was the digging stick, but I'd not likely bet that way.
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Another tool that I think is probably lots older than anybody gives it credit for is the ladder. Now before you call the men with the white coats, let me throw this at you. By ladder, I simply mean *anything* moved from it's original location to increase reach or veiw. A rock rolled 3 feet to stand on in a particular place would count. Of course archaeologists would not find evidence of such until such time as obviously altered ladders were durable enough to be either preserved or recorded, but my guess is primitive man knew early on that various objects could sometimes increase his reach or gaze. Heck, my dogs know that, and they're hardly tool users unless I'm the tool. :0

mps
 
Gettin serious about this for a moment
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I really believe it must have been a stick. After I saw a show on TV recently which showed a bird doing the same thing with a stick that Couger said the chimps did, I've got to believe early man used a stick first. After all early man was probably a bit of a birdbrain (a little light upstairs) don't you think. Of course some of us still are.

Now, it may have been a really big stick - thanks Teddy - but it must have been a stick. It seems the stick arguments here far outweigh any other (serious) tool mentioned.

That probably gives new meaning to the term stick fighter too!

[This message has been edited by Bob Irons (edited 01 April 1999).]
 
I think the first tool is a stone.
It was hammer and ax.
Next or same time,she or he find stick to use club and digger.
Throwing is late?It needs so many techs.
Knife what I know that has blade and hundle was considerably late.Non-hundle blade is not
so late,when user found manufactureing a stone with break.
Rope was early?It easy to find on vine,but not so easy to use it.

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CHic Stone
 
I think the first tool is a stone.
It was hammer and ax.
Next or same time,she or he find stick to use club and digger.
Throwing is late?It needs so many techs.
Knife what I know that has blade and hundle was considerably late.Non-hundle blade is not
so late,when user found manufactureing a stone with break.
Rope was early?It easy to find on vine,but not so easy to use it.

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CHic Stone
 
AAARRRRGGGGGG
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it was a stick!!
got to the woods 4 a few days , with nothing.
i promise the first thing u pick up will be a stickbig one 4 a club??
a sharp one to dig with???
a stick.
prob very little SCEIENTIFIC evidence.
sticks tend to rot
harley
cromagnon possum

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I don't think the message is getting through to everybody.... Yes, the first tool was a stick -- but that wasn't the first human tool; it was the first insect tool, hundreds of millions of years before the first humans....

Even pre-human hominids and opossums like our buddy harley are smarter than insects ... we can make and use sharp things....

Hey, harley -- how about posting a picture of the knife you won the contest with? I'd love to see a picture -- if you can email a scan to Spark he'll post it for you. I'd love a description of it, too. Did you use a parabolic edge?

-Cougar Allen :{)
 
Uh... If knife was the first tool, wouldn't the second tool have to be... bandaid?
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(Hey, if duct tape can be a tool, so can bandaid, no?)

(Sorry... I just had to post this. Couldn't stop myself...
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)

--
Tony the clumsy knife nut
 
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