Mark Wright Fireside

[mfbukowski]

Obsidian can be as sharp as a razor- I have shaved with an obsidian blade.

Very carefully.

Imagine a blade edge made of broken glass- that is what obsidian is- volcanic glass, and it can be re-sharpened as needed by flaking off new edges. We think of these implements as "stone age" but in fact they were simply made of easily obtainable materials and incredibly sophisticated and beautiful.

Imagine of being dropped in the wilderness and being able to make a knife and a few arrowheads for yourself in a few minutes out of a rock you find on the ground, using that knife to carve a branch into an atlatl and arrows, scraping some plant fibers and rolling them into string, attaching the blades with the string and using the rest of the string and more sticks to make a fire bow.

In a few hours, starting with nothing, you could be hunting with your atlatl and by dinner time be eating your venison over your cozy campfire.

And now you also have a supply of leather and bone and sinew you can do all kinds of things with. Maybe you will have a fur coat.

All this is done with incredible efficiency from materials you found readily available in your environment in a few hours.

Pretty primitive, huh?