Bearing block. Bung grass (Or I have heard a slug) into a wooden one to ease friction. A stone with an indent also works.
Maybe our ancestors did not use it once and throw it away, but presumably they used it quite a few times a day or week (Paul Kirtley has a photo on here of a Hazda using a hand drill to light a cigarette) and therefore the set would not last as long as if you knock out a coal every Saturday or every month. Therefore I believe the suggestions to throw it away after one use.....are to compensate for our decreased consumption rate of the kit and get us more in line with frequency of "builds" of hunter gatherers, which in turn gets us more in line with seeing what is available around us and interacting with it. Overall if you build a kit and take 6 months to wear it out then that's only 1 build and only 1 set of interactions with your surroundings. If you make a new set every week you have increased your experience by 2600%. That's a no brainer for me.