All raises interesting questions about primitive survival. I am certain that in the stone age not everybody could make axes and knap flints anymore than I suppose everybody could make fire from a fire bow. I would suppose just as in this modern age that there were specialists and that skills were traded for survival as they are today. I would even go so far as to suppose that certain "industries" such as flint knapping were a guarded secret much like the medieval guilds.
I think that there certainly were som skills that was not held by everyone. Just to take an example, I suspect that only a few could make the big Danish flint daggers. But producing a basic celt was probably something that most people (men? adult hunters?) could do. And even if a nice flint knife was beyond you producing and using small flakes is dead easy, and in many cultures was a fair portion of the cutting tools. And if you lived in slate country then even young children could produce okish knives from that.
My theory -- backed up by all that I've read -- is that most people (ignoring the high liklyhood of sexual task dimorphism) in the upper paleolithic could do the following tasks, at least good enough for practical use:
* basic lithic tools
* skin tanning
* cordage making
* shelter building
* starting a fire (even if some was easy experts and some would struggle; carrying and preserving fire was probably done
quite a lot)
* track (at least a bit)
* find edible plants (again, some would be experts, some would have only the basic skills)
Compare to today:
* drive a car (but not everyone is Schumacher)
* use a computer (but we have few guru level sysadmins or Knuth like programmers)
* cook a meal (but most are worse cooks than Jamie Oliver)
* mend a garment (but few that could find work on Savile Row)
* tell a Volkswagen Bug from a Porche 911, and a Saab from a Volvo; most could even look at at tyre track and tell
if it was made by a bicycle, a motorcycle, a car or a Bedford truck, but few can tell a New Holland tractor from a
John Deere by sound alone)
* program a VCR (but some will leave it blinking "12:00")
As to guilds; I suspect that there were trade secrets, and that certain skills were not passed along to everyone. But nothing as formalized as a guild; that takes a more organized and stratified society than is likely to form in smallish hunter-gatherer band (you might be the go-to man for top grade flint knives, bows baskets or arrows, but not the only source of stone tools, bows or arrows).
