Analysis of Cutting Tools Made In the Stone Age to the Iron Age
When the first mastodon was killed, our hunter ancestors of that long-past era must have felt dismayed, thinking, “What do we do now?” A Scottish biographer from centuries ago made a remark in his journal referring human beings as a “cooking animal.” However, it is widely assumed that the utilization of cutting tools was initiated by our Stone Age ancestors before they started using fire as a means of cooking hunted meat. In the beginning, sharpened stones were used to sharpen their cutting tools.
The refinement of basic cutting implement was made soon after the discovery of metals and alloys. At the time, a cutting implement was treated as the most basic survival device by our ancestors and it is integral for hunting, cutting and eating meat, and even for self-defense. Detailed below is a progression analysis of primitive cutting implement to modern knife. The objective of this analysis is to present the history of metallurgy and modern engineering in a concise manner.
Beginning from the Stone Age
Many historians have suggested that humans initiated the creation of tools made out of stone almost 3 million years ago. Cutting tools in their most ancient forms were constructed of stones such as obsidian, jade, flint and quartzite. Basically, with proper sharpening, these stones which comprise of parts that are all of the same kind, have the ability to render edges that are sharp enough to be used as an effective cutting tool.
The problem with the aforesaid stones was their fragility, thus making them well-suited to be utilized for short implements. Short as in approximately 5 inches long – no more than that! The essential commodities of hides and meat could be cut with stone tools, but the tools’ durability was never clear. In fact, our Stone Age ancestors would utilize hard stones as a hammer for the purpose of flaking away bits of flint in order to attain a point and sharp edges.
Work areas such as foundries, lathes, or elaborate factories were not needed by our Stone Age ancestors. Their work areas were nothing more than tree stumps or even large rocks. Handles of cutting tools were constructed from wood or bone, using a method identical to the one I mentioned earlier. A short handle was attached to a blade, thus forming a knife. A longer handle was attached, so it became an axe, while a much longer one indicated a spear. Looking at the shapes of many of our modern cutting tools, they actually bear an uncanny resemblance to their Stone Age counterparts.
Blade and Knife Development in the Bronze Age
The Bronze Age isn't any one specific period of time, but instead, a phase of metallurgical development that happened at various occasions in different parts of earth. The initial Bronze Age is usually termed as the Copper Age. Around 10,000 B.C, humans began to hammer copper into cutting tools, but the material was not effective enough for making cutting tools with respectable durability. Later on Bronze was utilized, an alloy consisting of 85% to 95 % copper most frequently blended with tin, producing superior toughness than pure copper and melts at a lower temperature.
Hard tools and weapons created from bronze maintained an edge a lot more desirable than stone. So while a small number of tools composed of pure copper have been discovered, bronze knives have been found in ridiculously great quantity in archeological sites throughout Europe. Bronze artifacts, including knives, going back to about 3000 B.C. have been uncovered in the Near East, and recent discoveries suggest a Bronze Age in Thailand dating back to 4500 B.C.
Blacksmiths of the Bronze Age would frequently include arsenic to the copper when smelting bronze because at the time, tin wasn't easily obtainable in most regions. The advantage of arsenic was that it provided additional durability, but the disadvantage came in the form of toxic fumes production. Even when the Bronze Age blacksmiths figured out that working outdoors would be ideal when handling arsenic, it was still typical for them to develop arsenic poisoning many years later. Much experimentation eventually resulted in the substitution of arsenic with tin as the other element of alloy.
Blade and Knife Development in the Iron Age
If you take the time to analyze the modern knife’s historical past, you will learn that it didn’t start off simply with the discovery of iron, but rather the capability to smelt iron and the capacity to control its properties. That our modern knives are manufactured from iron (to which carbon has been added to make steel) is proof of our ancestors’ impressive mental capacity to address issues through plenty of trial and error. It should be noted that iron is actually far more challenging to smelt compared to copper.
That is because iron needs a greater temperature in order to be smelt and continue to remain tough at the temperature at which copper melts. Iron contains impurities identified as slag. A number of blacksmiths of the Iron Age, most likely out of intense annoyance, found out that by striking a lump of near-molten iron he was able to extract the slag. The ensuing pure iron, referred to as wrought iron, is a soft iron that’s completely free of carbon.
Steel is the outcome when carbon is introduced into iron. The carbon originated from the charcoal-fired forges in which the smelting was carried out - as a blacksmith hammered away at the sword or plowshare he was inadvertently carburizing the iron and therefore, producing steel. Hammering for a specified duration (forging) to allow the carbon content to increase up to 1 percent resulted in the development of a tool that is significantly more robust, one that could hold an edge a lot more desirable compared to a tool crafted using bronze.
Such process did not have written record, however. Each batch of iron was not the same and an experienced blacksmith with a high level of competency came to identify which ores produced the greatest results. The utilization of flux, a component put into the iron-charcoal mix, lowered the temperature at which the slag melted, so smelting became a lot less difficult as a result.
In the second part, we will focus our analysis on the Industrial Age as well as modern knife creation in general. The second part of analysis on primitive cutting implement to modern knife can be viewed here.