"It's cold blade, collecting on its surface,
the moment it is drawn, the vapours of the atmosphere;
It's immaculate texture, flashing light of bluish hue;
Its matchless edge, upon which histories and possibilities hang."
Inazo Niyobe.
This story is a very old and very long one. It begins before the ages of metal, before
even the ages of stone. It begins before Art and Time and before awareness perhaps. Our
story begins the moment proto person picked up a stick to extend their reach. No record
exists of this event, no tongue to pass the story on. And yet the idea implicit in this
act survives. To be able to extend beyond the confines of this frail existance. To pluck
the apple from the tree of knowledge. To pass forever from innocence. Here in one brief
instant was Power. The power to defend in a world replete with creatures, all born armed
and dangerous. The power to shape a world.
This was the age of wood, bone and horn and it is the begining of our long journey as a
technological species. For it is our technology that makes us human and sets us apart from
the other creatures. Lots of species use found objects to manipulate their world. But a
true tool is not merely a found object, it is a fabricated device. So it is not the
adoption of found objects that sets us apart but rather the adaptation of those objects,
that they might better suit our purpose. We are the makers of tools and it is the making
that sets us apart. Perhaps more to the point we are the makers of edges.
The age of wood is not frequently reflected in the archeological record. It is an
ephemeral material, decaying for the most part in a few brief lifetimes. Yet some
tantilizing glimses of this time remain even in the modern world.
The aboriginal boomerang for example, is in its most basic form, a bent and flattened
throwing stick used as a hunting weapon, some forms of which are so cleverly designed that
when expertly thrown, they can be made to return to the hand that released them. This was
the first manmade flying wing and it was invented in the stone age.
Many field games, viewed by some as a kind of ritualised warfare, use wooden implements.
The cricket bat for instance with its diamond crossection is very sword like and seems ill
suited to its ostensible purpose. Though its well suited to teaching young lads how stand , aim and swing at something.
The Irish caman is well suited to its purpose but still has a remarkable resemblance to
war clubs as used by the northeast coast natives of America. The hero Cuchulin, played the
great game at a time when it was played between townlands and upwards of a hundred people or
more took to the field simultaneously. Now thats a game!
He got his name when he slew the hound of a man he was visiting by driving the ball down
the animal's throat. In recompense, he elected to take the place of the dog in Culin's
household and stood guard at the doorway for a number of years.
Fig 1.
In recent times interest has been growing in the Irish stick, blackthorn stick or bata. Its use, once ubiquitous, waned in the last century but as this picture shows it was considered an essential part of the gentleman's accutrements up to the early 1900s.
Wood is an excelent material for sword making. It is light tough and resilient. It is
easily worked and can even be hardened, somewhat. It only lacks a credible edge.
It is hardly surprising that someone finally got around to putting an edge on it.
Especially as the edge was the one tool used to create it. The Maya made excelent swords
of wood and obsidian and lines of flint have been found in Iroquois grave sites, as if
they once belonged to wooden shafts which have since decayed.
Copper in the early days, considering its scarcity, would also have been used as an edge for the wood sword and in later times wood was used in the manufacture of copper and bronze swords by pressing it into clay to form the mold.
Stone does yield a fine edge, razor sharp even. It would have been the cool tool material
of its day. With these edges people shaped their world as never before and all the
commonly used materials could be cut be with them. We don't usually think of stone as a
material suitable for swords, it holds a great edge but is brittle and unsuitable for long
pieces. Most stone blades were no more than 4 inches long, a few as long as 12 inches.
Jade in particular is suited for larger pieces but at best is appropot short swords only.
Stone tools were made in a blistering array of shapes and sizes. These were dictated by
the function of the tool and the methods of the maker. Most of these shapes are still
familiar to us today. Modern knives, axe heads, chisels, etc have shapes almost identical
to their stone age counterparts. Form followed function in those days too.
While most people could knock up a sharp edge, it seems likely that some specialisation
occured. Pieces displaying astonishing skill have been found.
All the basic hand tools have counterparts in the stone age. Knives, saws, chisles,
scrapers, drills, punches, awls, hammers, axes, adzes, picks, etc. Even disposable knives
such as the Stanley have an equivalent in stone age microliths, tiny shards of stone with
an inch or so of cutting edge.
Fig
2.
A:-- A line of flakes is removed from one edge of the nodule using repeated blows of the
hammer stone.
B:-- The opposite edge recieves the same treatment.
C:-- The center is dressed.
D:-- The finished product.
Stone toolmakers exploited characteristics inherent in the materials they worked. They
needed materials that could be cleaved or broken into predictable shapes. Materials of a
suitable hardness, tenacity and homogeneity. Basalt, chalcedony, chert, diorite, flint,
jade, jasper, obsidian, quartzite, rhyolite, etc.
Most of these materials, unlike jade which was ground or crushed, were shaped by a local
application of force in such a manner as to fracture the material along a desired
plane.This enabled the removal of a flake and when repeated revealed the required tool
inside the material. The flakes generated in this process were also used, but the primary
objective was core tool production. Fig 2.
Fig
3.
Fig 4.
Neuclei were also prepared from which blade blanks could be struck concentrically in a
single swipe, like peeling a banana. These "peelings" could be quickly retouched
into a variety of different tools and yielded a lot of high quality edge per nodule.
All this was achieved with a remarkably simple tool kit. Hammerstones were found in stream
beds and a good one would have been considered a treasure. Batons of wood were interposed
between hammer and workpiece when accuracy was required. The strike, incorporated a
pulling component which elongated the strike zone and facilitated long flake formation.
Non percussive methods called pressure flaking were also employed in which the point of an
antler was pressed into and across the stone, inducing a flake to simply pop off. Such
flaking was used to refine the final shape and impart a regular surface texture.
Notice the conchoidal fractures on this arrow point kindly provided by John Brown : Knifemaker and Flintknapper. Most arrow points would not have been as refined as this example. As John is at pains to point out most native people would have expended more time on the maintainance and construction of their arrow shafts than the points themselves.
Apart from these simple tools only a suitable work surface was required. A rock or tree
stump embedded in the ground or the left knee covered with a thick piece of hide could suffice.
Once in use stone tools were easy to resharpen. The edge could simply be redressed as
required. After its size was reduced somewhat it might well be reworked into an entirely
different tool. While percussive tools such as axes were ground to increase shock
resistance the flaked edge is sharper and easier to maintain.
With stone edges people could live in places they had previosly found inhospitable. Signs
of stone age life can be found on every continent except Antartica. Viewed in this context
the European voyages of "discovery" were about 10,000 years too late and not
nearly as impressive.
People have been making stone tools for about two and half million years and still do today in a very few places. However since the begining of the metal ages it can no longer be considered cutting edge technology, at least until the advent of the computer chip, that little wafer of silicon buried deep in the heart of every modern personal computer and the stone tablet upon which even these words are written.
