Stick Technology
There is an excellent story on the BBC Science page this week about early humans in Kenya’s rift valley, and their tool-making abilities. It’s still posted if you’re interested. The upshot: technology didn’t change much for maybe a million years, and then it’s like someone flipped a switch.
We made huge advances all in the matter of a few thousand years. We switched from large hand axes (stone) to small, and very sharp obsidian blades. It doesn’t sound speedy, but speaking relatively, I suppose it was.
A single line in the story struck me though: “Rather than shaping a block of rock into a hand axe, humans became interested in the sharp flakes that could be chipped off. These were mounted on spears and used as projectile weapons.” In short, a new technology mounted on a pre-existing one. Welcome to the Middle Stone Age.
But all this got me thinking about sticks (as in spears), not something that survives in the archeological record. From there it was easy to speculate that our distant ancestors probably had an extremely sophisticated stick technology that we know nothing about. If we’d been using them for tens of thousands of years, then we probably got pretty good at it.
There might have even been a stick specialist in the tribe, the person you went to when you needed the right stick for the job. And, it’s safe to say most sticks were handcrafted. Say, a stick that had been carefully prepared to fit exactly in your palm… or, perhaps wrapped with a piece of leather to make wielding it all the more comfortable.
Admittedly, my imagination went a bit wild:
short, thick sticks for clubbing things. Long, skinny sticks for poking things, hmm, like the fire that had been recently discovered. Curved flexible sticks for who knows what purpose, except that they made an awesome swooshing noise when employed properly. Sticks with prongs at the end (good for prehistoric marshmallows). Sticks for fishing, sticks for hunting, sticks for scratching hard to reach places. Sticks of all shapes and sizes. There’s no way to tell, but there may have even been a kind of stick shop back then, carrying only the most up-to-date models.
Let’s quickly browse through our imaginary stick mall: Hollow sticks (a big seller), old sticks, even retro-sticks; young sticks, soft and pliable. Sticks for walking upright, sticks for digging, for stabbing, or poking. Stout sticks, extra-long sticks, some from rare hardwoods; others, green and bendy. Sticks with branches on the end, good for sweeping up the cave… and of course, replacement sticks (even the best brands, elm, oak, and mahogany, break sooner or later).
In the end, we judge a civilization by what it leaves behind— that which survives the archeological record. What will we leave after a million years? What would our descendants find? Not a single stick, certainly; nor metal, plastic, or concrete… they would all have long since degraded to nothing. The answer is surprising: things made of stone, radioactive isotopes, a plethora of glass bottles, and a few space probes abandoned on the moon, or still drifting among the stars.
We made huge advances all in the matter of a few thousand years. We switched from large hand axes (stone) to small, and very sharp obsidian blades. It doesn’t sound speedy, but speaking relatively, I suppose it was.
A single line in the story struck me though: “Rather than shaping a block of rock into a hand axe, humans became interested in the sharp flakes that could be chipped off. These were mounted on spears and used as projectile weapons.” In short, a new technology mounted on a pre-existing one. Welcome to the Middle Stone Age.
But all this got me thinking about sticks (as in spears), not something that survives in the archeological record. From there it was easy to speculate that our distant ancestors probably had an extremely sophisticated stick technology that we know nothing about. If we’d been using them for tens of thousands of years, then we probably got pretty good at it.
There might have even been a stick specialist in the tribe, the person you went to when you needed the right stick for the job. And, it’s safe to say most sticks were handcrafted. Say, a stick that had been carefully prepared to fit exactly in your palm… or, perhaps wrapped with a piece of leather to make wielding it all the more comfortable.
Admittedly, my imagination went a bit wild:
short, thick sticks for clubbing things. Long, skinny sticks for poking things, hmm, like the fire that had been recently discovered. Curved flexible sticks for who knows what purpose, except that they made an awesome swooshing noise when employed properly. Sticks with prongs at the end (good for prehistoric marshmallows). Sticks for fishing, sticks for hunting, sticks for scratching hard to reach places. Sticks of all shapes and sizes. There’s no way to tell, but there may have even been a kind of stick shop back then, carrying only the most up-to-date models.
Let’s quickly browse through our imaginary stick mall: Hollow sticks (a big seller), old sticks, even retro-sticks; young sticks, soft and pliable. Sticks for walking upright, sticks for digging, for stabbing, or poking. Stout sticks, extra-long sticks, some from rare hardwoods; others, green and bendy. Sticks with branches on the end, good for sweeping up the cave… and of course, replacement sticks (even the best brands, elm, oak, and mahogany, break sooner or later).
In the end, we judge a civilization by what it leaves behind— that which survives the archeological record. What will we leave after a million years? What would our descendants find? Not a single stick, certainly; nor metal, plastic, or concrete… they would all have long since degraded to nothing. The answer is surprising: things made of stone, radioactive isotopes, a plethora of glass bottles, and a few space probes abandoned on the moon, or still drifting among the stars.
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