Cavemen Sharper Than Believed - Pressure Flaking Of Tools Pushed Back 50,000 Years
Saturday, October 30, 2010 - 00:50
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Sharpening tools is no easy task. If you've ever tried to do it yourself you know that prehistoric man had to have developed real skill to sharpen stone tools - using pressure flaking, no less. Pressure flaking is a technique where implements shaped by hard stone hammers strikes and then softer wood or bone strikes are carefully trimmed by directly pressing the point of a tool made of bone on the edges of the tool. A new study says pressure flaking was being used at Blombos Cave in South Africa during the Middle Stone Age by anatomically modern humans and involved the heating of silcrete (quartz grains cemented by silica) used to make tools. read more