Woodworking has been a human passion for nearly half a million years!

[Fitzroy]

Team member Perrice Nkombwe, from the Livingstone Museum, in Zambia, said: "I was amazed to know that woodworking was such a deep-rooted tradition. "It dawned on me that we had uncovered something extraordinary."

Somepeople have no awareness that all woodworking is extraordinary!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66846772

 

[Tris]

That means we've been arguing about sharpening for the best part of 5000 centuries

 

[Spectric]

I doubt it was always a passion, more a neccessity because wood has always been around and when you look at what was achieved it would have been very hard graft.

 

[AES]

That means we've been arguing about sharpening for the best part of 5000 centuries

Nah. Even Jacob is not THAT old!

 

[paulrbarnard]

I always marvel at the thought process someone went through the first time something was done in a specific way. When I look at a problem today any solution I come up with is based on accumulated knowledge and understanding of the principles of physics and mechanics. Take something like the Sweet Track here in Somerset.

Can you imagine standing there and pounding in some stakes and then thinking if I just put a log on the ground between the stakes it will stop them collapsing inwards? For me that’s right up there with every thing happening at the LHC

 

[Jacob]

Team member Perrice Nkombwe, from the Livingstone Museum, in Zambia, said: "I was amazed to know that woodworking was such a deep-rooted tradition. "It dawned on me that we had uncovered something extraordinary."

Somepeople have no awareness that all woodworking is extraordinary!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66846772

"The Wood Age" Roland Ennos. Essential reading and very readable. He argues that wood was used for millennia in many ways but the archaeological evidence is scanty, unlike stone, pot, and other things which don't decompose so quickly,
https://inquisitivebiologist.com/20...e-material-shaped-the-whole-of-human-history/

 

[whereistheceilidh]

I doubt it was always a passion, more a neccessity because wood has always been around and when you look at what was achieved it would have been very hard graft.

I think....or hope that it would have been a passion for some who had their brains wired to think in 3D & about the behaviour of materials. Hard graft does not mean it could not be enjoyable or a passion developed and new ways of doing things created......

 

[stuckinthemud]

I trained in archaeology, my son also, I still dabble in medieval archaeology as a hobby. Archaeologists drive me nuts. People are people, always have been, the human ability to think and problem solve hasn’t changed but everyone assumes lack of technology equals stoopid. This attitude is Victorian (literally) and should not pervade current attitudes to our ancestors but we cannot escape it. Our ancestors had generations of received knowledge and time to think about, discuss and trial solutions. Consider just how difficult it is to build a longbow, make a string and a set of perfect arrows, yet by the Bronze Age people had mastered composite angular hornbows. Why are archaeologists constantly surprised that someone could notch and join two timbers when 4000 years ago the outer Hebrides were the heart of a maritime culture that spanned at least the whole of Western and Northern Europe with trade links to Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.

 

[rob1693]

I enjoy working on my roman bench for large pieces ,i find sitting on the piece and planing much more intuitive than standing at my English bench

 

[Cooper]

This thread made wonder about the tools used.
At the end of Desert Island Discs, they always ask what luxury would you like to take with you. I wonder if you could only take one tool to an island (which had trees) what would it be?

 

[paulrbarnard]

This thread made wonder about the tools used.
At the end of Desert Island Discs, they always ask what luxury would you like to take with you. I wonder if you could only take one tool to an island (which had trees) what would it be?

Combined smelter/forge

 

[Adam W.]

Mine would be an axe.

 

[Jacob]

Mine would be an MFT with 1000 dogs. Perhaps 1000mm Dual Scale Fence System - Ver2.1.
or perhaps Woodpeckers Story Stick Pro - 96" Dual Scale.

 

[DrPhill]

Mine would be an MFT with 1000 dogs. Perhaps 1000mm Dual Scale Fence System - Ver2.1.
or perhaps Woodpeckers Story Stick Pro - 96" Dual Scale.

Marriage and Family Therapy?

 

[Cobbs]

Combined smelter/forge

Let's just hope it's not a coral island then! (Unless you plan on repurposing the steel boat you ran aground in...)

 

[Cobbs]

"The Wood Age" Roland Ennos. Essential reading and very readable. He argues that wood was used for millennia in many ways but the archaeological evidence is scanty, unlike stone, pot, and other things which don't decompose so quickly,
https://inquisitivebiologist.com/20...e-material-shaped-the-whole-of-human-history/

Just had a birthday, got some book tokens - have ordered your recommendation. Thank you!

 

[Terry - Somerset]

I always marvel at the thought process someone went through the first time something was done in a specific way. When I look at a problem today any solution I come up with is based on accumulated knowledge and understanding of the principles of physics and mechanics. Take something like the Sweet Track here in Somerset.
View attachment 166679
Can you imagine standing there and pounding in some stakes and then thinking if I just put a log on the ground between the stakes it will stop them collapsing inwards? For me that’s right up there with every thing happening at the LHC

There may be two separate routes to innovation.

The above may be simpler to understand - it is evolution of a principle or something that may already have existed at a different scale on land. Possible examples - ridge pole for basic shelter, drying rack for meat, fish or skins, "bed" to raise the sleeper from the ground.

I wonder more about those innovations which have no intermediate steps of value, and are highly unlikely to happen simply by chance - eg:

• why would anyone heat a coffee bean, grind it, infuse it, then drink the infusion.
• cashew nuts in their raw state are poisonous - why would anyone boil or steam them to ensure they were edible.
• what stimulated early man to develop a furnace that could heat a lump of rock to ~1250C to turn "stone" to "steel"

 

[paulrbarnard]

There may be two separate routes to innovation.

The above may be simpler to understand - it is evolution of a principle or something that may already have existed at a different scale on land. Possible examples - ridge pole for basic shelter, drying rack for meat, fish or skins, "bed" to raise the sleeper from the ground.

I wonder more about those innovations which have no intermediate steps of value, and are highly unlikely to happen simply by chance - eg:

• why would anyone heat a coffee bean, grind it, infuse it, then drink the infusion.
• cashew nuts in their raw state are poisonous - why would anyone boil or steam them to ensure they were edible.
• what stimulated early man to develop a furnace that could heat a lump of rock to ~1250C to turn "stone" to "steel"

Good points but funnily enough I view things in the opposite direction and find coffee beans and cashews as events highly likely to happen by chance as a part of pure survival. The steel example is more evolutionary but the first extraction of metals was likely the result of a good camp fire.

Working out the mechanics of building a lodge roof to keep the rain out needs a basic ability to understand how things interact mechanically and a degree is skill in the application of that understanding.

 

[Cooper]

Combined smelter/forge

Obviously you expect a supply of scrap, possibly from the wreck. Good thinking.

 

[Jacob]

....

Working out the mechanics of building a lodge roof to keep the rain out needs a basic ability to understand how things interact mechanically and a degree is skill in the application of that understanding.

Chimpanzees do it