5,300-year-old 'bow drill' rewrites story of ancient Egyptian tools
ncl.ac.uk
ncl.ac.uk
Well stated. We often forget that people in the past had the same exact minds and abilities as the people of today and were in no way inferior or "primitive". I think this accounts for a lot of presentism that leaks into our understanding of history.
I wish there were a shorter way to express this idea...
Archaeological proofs have the unfortunate property of having each deductive step being fairly obvious and limited, but proving those steps can be literally impossible.
Because electricity was unreliable and machinery was expensive.
I have a thing for old tools, but not much can substitute a drill when one is needed. And the ones I refer to are surprisingly effective, and built to last. Borders on art for me.
Same technique is also used for spinning a wooden churner to get butterfat out of curd. A standing woman would pull the rope back and forth for a few minutes on the long churner stick that is churning the curd in a clay pot placed on the floor.
Can you be more specific here? In an article about civilization 5300 years ago, where India has had a human population for at least 65,000 years, saying "always" is fairly vague
Somewhat relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle
> you can’t always make a definitive statement
It's far short of that. Human speculation is wildly unreliable and we seem to always overestimate it, perhaps because it's emotionally satisfying: What other speculative answer would we choose but something that satisfies our emotions? Lacking evidence, nothing compels us to face the unpleasant or unexpected. Look what our understanding of nature and the world was before we required evidence (before science).
But if you don't see how people yearn to believe in big dramatic things like conspiracies, aliens, bigfoot, or even simple narratives about single people changing the course of history, and how they only accept the complicated and/or boring reality with conscious effort, then, well, you seem to be living in a better universe than I am.
At least in the case of things like migrations, we're starting to get overwhelming genetic evidence.
> Balance would be nice, yes
a, you can drill a hole and cut a 100 ton stone block with a chisel
b, you create a hole with a drill, you use some for of stone cutting technology that supports cutting 100 ton stone blocks?
- Incan stonework with stones 'perfectly' cut to fit without mortar -- did they have advanced tools to support that? Or just persistence?
- Greek fire -- is there some lost mechanism here? Or just the growth of legends?
- the pyramids (I think not so controversial among academics, but certainly in pop culture)
Can you explain what you're referring to? Obviously "ancient aliens" does not count as archaeology, despite your insistence otherwise.
(Just saw the snark about ancient aliens; no idea where that came from. If you're going to try to imply that that's my position you'll need to produce some artifacts to back it up.)
Two examples from over a century is not evidence of unreliability.
> if you have a theory that explains facts (e.g. drilled holes) but no physical artifacts (in this case drills) it will be rejected".
Evidence is a requirement in all scholarship; the rest is speculation - which can be useful as a direction for searching for evidence, but is not sufficient to be accepted in any field. What field accepts claims without evidence?
As for the examples, when they start with "swings over the years" they're clearly taking a long-term perspective, and not trying to claim that modern archaeology will "believe anything" (especially not when their more prominent claim is that modern archaeology believes too little).
Ridicule is the refuge of those without an argument. Maybe try standup or Twitter.
But more importantly, where did MarkusQ ridicule you? What's your excuse for not reading what they actually said, but instead imagining something they said that was conveniently easy to criticize?
The important part of my phrase "laughably bad-faith" was the bad-faith part. That's what destroys "that relationship".
There are also numerous examples where physical artifacts haven't been immediately accepted. The white sands footprints. Monte Verde II. Others like Monte Verde I, Buttermilk Creek, and Cooper's ferry still aren't accepted despite physical evidence.
Consensus generally has high standards for anything that pushes boundaries. It's very easy to construct an "obvious" explanation that's totally wrong. We call these "just-so" stories. A narrative that's supported by physical evidence is a lot more verifiable.
Well of course it wasn't a current example -- to quote their original comment:
> Quite frustrating how archeology swings over the years from "we'll believe anything" to "we won't accept any claim without a preserved example". While some of the excesses of the past were clearly excessive ... [emphasis added]
In other words, they feel that historical examples of fanciful theories being mainstream has resulted in an over correction to modern archeology requiring unreasonably strict proof standards.
(There is a certain irony in a user called "AlotOfReading" not reading a fairly short comment carefully...)
Archaeology has come a long way over the last couple of centuries. It used to be little better than grave robbing and crackpot (often racist) theories. Archaeologists made all sorts of assumptions that turned out to be ridiculously (and sometimes tragically) wrong. Excavations once involved dynamite and bulldozers. Things have changed. Techniques for re-analyzing and extracting new information from old finds are allowing archaeologists to make discoveries without digging at all. Even a careful, modern dig is a destructive act that can only be conducted once.
It's not frustrating. It's progress.
Could you provide some evidence of your own? Archaeology has always been tied to evidence, as any scholarship is.
archeology is a cesspool.
not to mention tons of hings being twisted into weird shit only to try and push colonial agendas!
These days it's seen as a dynamic decision tree. If such and such people had so and so technology, then the logical ways to achieve that are x, y and z methods. Let's look for evidence for those things and weigh up the probability of each. Importantly, let's not allow cultural bias to cloud that analysis by consulting with the closest living relatives of said people.
The problems are, amongst others, maintaining that lack of cultural bias, recognising that you have to allow for unknown paths to technology, and being aware that every deductive step exponentially expands the decision tree whilst simultaneously clouding the certainty.
This is why modern archaeology is actually highly averse to saying things are "true", but it's also very strong on saying other things are almost certainly "false".
Most things in this tree of dwindling probability are "false" , and it takes serious evidence, linking a bunch of deductive steps, to flip the consensus to "true".
Historical sea levels were wildly different at different times, so not necessarily. For instance, the British isles were settled at a point when it was a part of the mainland: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doggerland.png
For me the ‘archaeology not accepting things’ has been fueled by Graham Hancock etc. Archaeology is a lot like science, it sits on a body of research, if there’s evidence of advanced tooling and it’s properly investigated and written up, verified, no archaeologist would deny it.
My theory is that the industry is so small, they are afraid it will put them out of a career.
Just speculation, but it suggests how practical problem-solving builds on existing techniques rather than appearing fully formed.
Neanderthals existed just fine without it for some time, interestingly.
That thing has probably been independently invented a hundred thousand times over. Trying to figure out who did it first is silly.
Also that is not a "sophisticated" tool at all. It's literally one step above hitting rocks together. Sharp rocks happens to be the only tool you need to make a basic bow drill.
True. Good thing no one is trying to do that.
You clearly haven't bothered to do your research.
But we cannot blame you for your ignorance.
It took many years, but modern scientists have finally reverse engineered Wootz steel to understand its incredible secrets, and identified that Wootz steel was the result of extraordinary metallurgical processes with scientific acumen and excellence based on multiple millenia of research, experimentation and practice in ancient India.
"conclusive evidence of the carbon nanostructure in the carburising slag from 400 BCE to 16th century CE, covering 2000 years of technological continuity": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01675...
"Modern analysis of surviving Wootz ingots has revealed the critical presence of these impurities. Silicon, for instance, is thought to have aided in the complete removal of sulfur during the smelting process, a common contaminant that can lead to brittle steel. Phosphorus, on the other hand, while often considered detrimental in steelmaking, appears to have been essential in the formation of specific microstructures within the Wootz. The exact ratios and interactions of these elements were likely a result of empirical knowledge, painstakingly acquired through trial and error over centuries." https://www.realloreandorder.com/the-ancient-nanotechnology-...
A legend reborn: Additive manufacturing creates Wootz-Damascus steel: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mrs-bulletin/article...
Carbon nanotechnology in an 17th century Damascus sword Discover the secret behind the legendary Damascus blades and how carbon nanotubes shaped sword-making techniques of ancient blacksmiths: https://www.discovermagazine.com/carbon-nanotechnology-in-an...
You need to create string. You need to cut the wood for the bow. The bow and the string need to be the right sizes too. You need something that is sharp enough to work as the drill bit but also small AND approximately round enough to work in the bow. That also needs to be made of a material that is harder than the one you are drilling - here in this story there was some sort metallurgy involved to create the alloy, so that likely involves working with ores etc (mining, identifying, processing etc etc).
There are a lot of steps. You can't just find a random "vine" to wrap snuggly and securely around a random thing you find to use as a drill bit that is like 1cm in diameter - you'll need something of consistent size and highly flexible for the string, similar for the drill bit needs to be the right size and so on.
The next step up from banging rocks together is probably using sharp stone chips as scrapers or crude knives. Even napped stone axes are quite difficult to create and require skill, even if the raw components are literally laying around.
I suspect the average person would struggle to make fire, let alone hand tools.
That region typically used flax for string. That's another thing that can be done with virtually no tools.
Even if you skip the retting and merely hand-strip the fibers you still get something usable enough for some use.
These people didn't sit inside looking at screens all day. If your region had a plant that can be trivially turned into usable string you'd know - especially since they had contact/trade with neighboring Asia and there's evidence of flax processing in Georgia another 30k years earlier.
> I suspect the average person would struggle to make fire, let alone hand tools.
It took us maybe a few days of experimenting to finally figure out as boys. We used some modern string, random sticks, and an assortment of materials to try to start a fire with. It's harder than it seems, but not much so if you're determined. If some bored 8 year olds can do it, then so can anyone of any era.
I don't think the linage of anyone for whom that was truly so unattainable would have survived to this day.
Replying to myself because I looked into this a bit. Looks like date palm fiber might have been more common for rope (likely much easier to make if you needed a lot).
For this use-case probably nowhere near as good though.
That is to say there's nothing special about rope, you can make it with nothing but your bare hands.
Except for native silver, which is very rare and usually mixed with gold, most silver is extracted from sulfides where it is mixed with lead (because silver ions and lead ions have the same size), so simple smelting will produce a mixture of silver and lead.
There are techniques of purifying the silver from the lead (i.e. "cupellation"), which were well known in later antiquity, but, at the time of early tools like this, probably the purification was not yet efficient.
The knowledge of the fact that pure metals are soft but mixing them makes hard metals is extremely ancient. Before learning this, metals could be used only for jewelry (except for very rare natural alloys, like the meteorites made of Fe-Ni-Co-Ge, which were the source of the oldest iron-based tools found in Egypt and elsewhere, thousands of years before the discovery of how to extract iron from its minerals).
Before discovering tin and the bronze made from copper and tin, which happened relatively recently, around the time when written history also began, for many thousands of years various weaker copper alloys were used, but which nonetheless were much harder than pure copper.
The metallurgy of 3 metals, lead, copper and gold, is very old, around ten thousand years or more. So more time has passed from the time when the techniques of smelting metals and making objects of them were first discovered until the discovery of other metals, e.g. silver and tin, and the diversification of metal-working techniques, than since that moment until the present.
There was a lot of time for refining the techniques used by smiths.
I still want to know how the scoop marks were made in the ancient quarries. What tool could do that?
Btw. the scoop marks are still a mystery. I would not classify people who are challenging the current narratives conspiracy theorists, they are skeptics really.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AlternativeHistory/comments/u33lbj/...
We are leaning into conspiracy theories / not accepted history but making these marks with the currently thought tools seems quite insensible, and are related to the article. Folks seem to think we have not found the real tools that created these structures. The vertical inward scoop marks are especially suspect.
[0] - https://www.theancientconnection.com/aswan-unfinished-obelis...
[1] - https://www.theancientconnection.com/megaliths/egypt/the-ser...
The last 10 years have been enlightening.