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B
ruce Sterling wrote about flintknapping
— the making of stone tools — in the first
issue of Make: in an article wonderfully titled
“Make the Tools That Made You.” He wrote that
stone tools date back over two millions years.
“Modern humans are just 200,000 years old” so
our hominid “ancestors spent 1.8 million years
making tools out of rocks.”
Search for flintknapping on YouTube and you’ll
find many instructional videos, usually with a
person showing their knicked-up hands directing
a blow of one rock on another. Knapping is not
something you can learn just by watching. You
need to develop the feel for it, which r