There. That's alright.
Spot on. Told you I was a natural.
This is a cognitive evolution a third-year module for anthropologists.
And what we are doing here today is getting the students to watch
John Lord, a master flint maker at work
showing them how to make stone tools and some of the processes involved.
Often, when Sam and I are talking we say this is what a hand axe looks like
but for students it's difficult to understand what goes into this
until you've had a go, until you've watched someone like John who just
'bash bash bash' until he produces this amazing object.
The students then have a go and think hang on, this is really complicated.
You see it's a little difficult sometimes to get all the coordinates together -
the angle, the pressure, and the accuracy
involved to remove just one predictable piece from any flintstone.
If you are making an axe head you know what the implement should look like.
You know what you want, you should, therefore, be able to assess the piece you're taking off.
You should know what that looks like, or what you'd hope it to look like.
So it's a thorough knowledge
of the stone.
So the oldest stone tools that we know of are about 3.3 million years old.
When you look at the remains of our lives and our communities, what you find are stone tools.
We were probably using all sorts of wooden tools as well
but stone tools don't rot away so they leave us with a really good record of it.
Interestingly, up until about 6 or 7 months
ago if you have had asked me that question
I would have probably said 2.6 million years ago, so it's gone back almost a million years.
I think we probably wouldn't be that surprised if next week there was a paper saying stone tools were 4 million years ago.
We know that chimpanzees don't make stone tools like this but they use stones to bash open nuts and things
You can see the roots of this tool making could go very deep indeed.
That's a really good one.
No, I made that - from my big piece of stone.
