Thread by @serbiaireland

Thread: This is an example of a Neolithic shaft hammer axe...It is made of stone. A hole was drilled through it, and a shaft is fixed into it. Nothing special...Except how did they drill this hole through a stone without metal drills? Well here is how:

Get a stone from which you are going to shape the axe head. Scrape the initial circle where the hole is going to go using a sharp stone harder than the stone for the axe. Then pour some quartz sand on it...This one in the picture has magnetite in too...

Then get a straight smooth hardwood stick. Place it on the sand and start spinning it with your hands...Fast...

The pressure applied with the stick on the sand particles and the spinning of the stick will cause the sand to scrape at the surface of the stone. The abrasive action of the sand will remove bits of stone...Slowly...Very slowly...

Eventually you will end up with this...Now repeat...Until you finally go through the stone...

Now, here is a million dollar question: what happens if you try the same technique used here to drill through stone, to drill through a piece of wood?

Well depends how lucky (or unlucky) you are...If you pick just the right combination of the drill stick and the wooden board, and you continue spinning your drill after all the sand is gone, you get this:

Is this how it happened? Is this how fire was "invented"? I would say 100% definitely...A lucky coincidence 🙂

I can't see any other way in which people were able to arrive to the idea that spinning a stick on a wooden board will eventually produce fire...

But accidentally producing fire by drilling wood with wood...Almost inevitable...

Oh yeah. For those who said: but what about flint

https://twitter.com/serbiaireland/status/1322140357413474304

What did people do before they invented the way to make fire? Well they had to find it and catch it...

https://twitter.com/serbiaireland/status/1322192061521690624

If fire making was known since Palaeolithic, why is fire drill among the things whose inventions were in Eurasian mythologies attributed to superhuman beings, gods and heroes?

https://twitter.com/serbiaireland/status/1322264701372452864