Primitive Tech Tree

[TeeDee]

So I'm hoping people will understand what I mean if I use the term ' Tech Tree' - but if not a Tech Tree is a sort of linear & spurred progression of innovations or tools that then allowed a jump or progression to a next level of innovation and so on and so forth.

At certain points multiple innovated jumps would occur together.

With all that being said I wonder if there is a primitive tech tree of I guess historic artefacts or skills?

Example for ease of understanding

If I craft a primitive stone knife I can then craft elements to make a fire plough, with a fire plough I can make a fire hardened digging stick , with a digging stick I can dig and gather clay , with clay and fire I can create pottery etc etc

I'm just wondering if from historic evidence if there was a common path of tech tree jumps from one thing to another?

Where does a Bow sit? before or after pottery etc


Hoping that makes some kind of sense.

 

[Broch]

Where does a Bow sit? before or after pottery etc

I haven't come across a formal Tech Tree for lithic periods TBH. To some extent it is location dependent as well.

However, I can answer the above question, the bow was way before glazed pottery and, almost certainly, before unglazed pottery.

I'll dig out my notes on Meso & Neo Lithic development and see if I can construct a tree but I think the evidence is not well enough preserved to be conclusive. Maybe one of our resident archaeologists will correct me

 

[TeeDee]

I haven't come across a formal Tech Tree for lithic periods TBH. To some extent it is location dependent as well.

However, I can answer the above question, the bow was way before glazed pottery and, almost certainly, before unglazed pottery.

I'll dig out my notes on Meso & Neo Lithic development and see if I can construct a tree but I think the evidence is not well enough preserved to be conclusive. Maybe one of our resident archaeologists will correct me

Yes - wasn't so much a specific Bow question more a general - what leads to what.

Think Minecraft ( if you know what that is??! ) meets this guy https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA


Just a general - what would be in a tool bag of a prehistoric Guy ( or Gal.... ) and which item would become naturally fashioned first etc

 

[Pattree]

It makes sense and would be an intriguing study. It could be a way of discovering coexistence and correlations for a deeper study.
As I see it: you’d be ok with stone and pottery but it’s hard to say when artefacts of softer materials were introduced. We may have some idea about the earliest examples we’ve found but that’s not the same as introduction. Does a stone with a hole in it tell us that weaving was happening?
Is this something that you are thinking of embarking on?

 

[TeeDee]

It makes sense and would be an intriguing study. It could be a way of discovering coexistence and correlations for a deeper study.
As I see it: you’d be ok with stone and pottery but it’s hard to say when artefacts of softer materials were introduced. We may have some idea about the earliest examples we’ve found but that’s not the same as introduction. Does a stone with a hole in it tell us that weaving was happening?
Is this something that you are thinking of embarking on?

"Is this something that you are thinking of embarking on?"

I was thinking that yes it would make an interesting pathway of study - Step to Step project/ tool fashioning to then create a larger tool set to allow larger and more complex projects.

I think the first part would have to be fashioning a cutting edge - but then what ? and what after that ? and so on and so forth.

 

[Pattree]

I think the first part would have to be fashioning a cutting edge - but then what ? and what after that ? and so on and so forth.

That’s going to be difficult. We are good at detecting flakes and stones worked by hominids but would we recognise the earliest attempts? I think @TeeDee is looking to the first emergence of technologies at the point where exploration might diverge. eg. Experiments with a scraper leading to a slicing tool or vice-versa.
When did the first cord or thong emerge and why? When we know those two things we might see how thinking developed towards textiles, transportation, construction and sooner or later to a net, a bow, a slingshot, a whip or a belt…… or something else.

(Have guts ever been used for garters?)

 

[Toddy]

Look up Pitt Rivers, and development of technology, and Henry Balfour.

There's a famous illustration of the tools that developed from a simple stick. One line goes out to throwing sticks and boomerangs, another to bows, another to spears, another to shields....

Home

www.prm.ox.ac.uk

 

[Toddy]

Nice explanation here

Evolution Made Easy: Henry Balfour, Pitt Rivers, and the Evolution of Art

by guest contributor Laurel Waycott In 1893, Henry Balfour, curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, UK, conducted an experiment. He traced a drawing of a snail crawling over a twig, and passed it to another person, whom he... Continue Reading →

www.jhiblog.org

 

[Broch]

Are we talking about Britain or the world? There are obviously huge differences with some technologies developed tens of thousands of years before they appear in Britain.

In any one culture it's more feasible to identify the flow of innovation and development; in Britain, less so. First, man (not Homo Sapiens) has been and gone from these islands many times. In doing so there is disconnect of evidence of technology development here. Most obvious technology change here occurred when new cultures brought it (such as the Beaker People).

On top of that, we are talking about periods of tens of thousands of years with huge changes in climate that put different pressures on innovation - so development is not always a 'process' but sometimes a switch forced by the environment.

Here's a very short and stilted summary of prehistoric man in Britain. If we are concentrating on Britain (which is my passion), innovation changes have to be considered with reference to these (and more detailed) cultural and environmental changes. I've given one example of 'step change' in technology in the Levallois flint tools.

If we're not concentrating on Britain, it's even more complicated and you can ignore this whole post .

400,000 ybp Hoxnian inter-glacial period, Hand axes, use of fire, crafted wood
330,000 ybp Levallois flint tools (see below)
240,000 ybp clothing and fire
180,000 ybp humans forced out of Britain by cold
60,000 ybp man returns, wooden handled stone tools, resin glue
45,000 ybp Upper Paleolithic, leaf-point blades for larger prey
40,000 ybp earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Britain
30,000 ybp Britain is uninhabited again
15,000 ybp Magdalanian Humnas arrive in Britain
12,800 ybp Younger Dryas cold period, human occupation of Britain probably not continuous
11,500 ybp Holocene and Mesolithic Hunter gatherers, start of known continuous human occupation in Britain
8,500 ybp Dogger land floods, Britain is an island
6,000 ybp Start of the Neolithic and the introduction of farming in Britain, very little Mesolithic DNA remains
4,300 ybp Arrival of the Beaker People in Britain replacing 90% of Neolithic farmers
3,800 ybp Start of the Bronze age in Britain
2,800 ybp Stat of the iron age in Britain

‘Levallois’, the manufacture of tools by flaking off a desired shape from a ‘material’ stone. This meant a ‘tool chest’ could be carried and the desired tool made when needed. A stone age Swiss Army Knife.

 

[TeeDee]

Ok - lets spin it on its head.

Fantasy scenario - you are marooned in a wilderness location abundant with a range of normal resources but you have nothing apart from the unbreakable clothes on your back. ( The clothes and fabric can't be used )

What would be the first tool you make or thing you make?
And what would then be the 2nd thing?
And what would then be the 3rd thing?

In short what be your Tech Tree?

 

[Toddy]

...if you have the right kind of stone......

People used shell the same way, antler, bone and wood

 

[Toddy]

Digging stick.

 

[TeeDee]

...if you have the right kind of stone......

People used shell the same way, antler, bone and wood

Ok , but fundamentally - its a cutting implement

 

[Pattree]

Digging stick.

Why are all four developments in the diagram combat tools?
What about digging sticks as @Toddy says.
…… or
Walking stick,
Teaching aid/communication aid
Drying/storage rack
Shelter support,
Signaling device
Carrying device
Travois

Axel - No. That’s no good even if the first wheel has been invented.

 

[Toddy]

That was just one diagram. There are others that all start from the simple 'stick'.

Even pottery comes from stuff dug up with a stick

 

[Broch]

We've even got evidence of apes using sticks to poke out grubs, hit other apes with, threaten predators with ....

From the humble stick comes everything else! possibly, or did man pick up a stone first?

I still think the 'situation' defines what is developed when and why, and stuff is developed in parallel as well, seeded by different needs and desires.

But, picking up on TeeDee's 'what next' scenario we can go back to the basics of survival and identify what we need to invent to do that.

Food - so, I can dig up some roots with my hand, it hurts I use a stone, it's not long enough to get down, I use a stick. I hit a lizard with a stone, I eat it, the next one is too far away so I throw the stone, the next one is running so I throw a spinning stick. But now I want to catch that bigger animal, the stick bounces off - enter a pointed stick, I now need a cutting tool, enter the stone or bone scraper; the point isn't hard enough for the thick skin, enter a stick with an antler/bone/stone tip. I'm hunting in woods and throwing a spear is cumbersome - enter the blowpipe or the bow and arrow - they lasted tens of thousands of years but evolved to be lighter, faster, more powerful. If, I could get all the food I wanted with a digging stick, or the weather was always good enough not to need clothing, as would be the case in some areas of the world, I wouldn't need to develop the following technologies. Never has the term 'necessity is the mother of invention' been so true. But, these things happened over tens of thousands of years!

In 'lithic' Britain there was water everywhere - no need to invent the gourd bottle or the animal stomach water vessel - but in arid countries, and the need to cover distances to hunt, carrying water would be a priority, so different path of development.

In parallel, shelter - sticks and big animal hides, and cold drives the need for clothing, which comes from the success in hunting larger animals because we have bows (though, in Britain, I still maintain the need for clothing is driven by the need to run through bramble patches to hunt ).

I suspect fire was an accident - ooh, look, when I was trying to hit this flint with this funny rock it made the grass smoke (come on, tens of thousands of years of hitting flint with pyrites and you don't think man noticed it did something?). It only meant man didn't have to leave the cooling lands quite as quickly as before - maybe hung on in there for an extra thousand years or so. And of course, food was easier to eat and digest. But I don't think fire was invented out of need, it happened, and uses were developed out of opportunity.

And, there it could have rested until some imbecile invented farming when it all started to go wrong. But, that's another story.

 

[Laurentius]

I am not an archaeologist but borrowing from evolution in the biological world, we see that the same innovation can occur independently several times over. I am willing to gamble that certain tools and techniques were developed in more than one place and time as a need for them arose and where the natural resources to make them were abundent and easy to hand. Some things just suggest themselves as tools such as deer antler for digging.

 

[Broch]

I have many resources on the Mesolithic and Neolithic but I can recommend this book for anyone seriously interested in the subject. Published in 2022 it is the most up to date resource I have found and approaches the subject from both a chronological and regional perspectives.

It's a study not a read though, a bit dry.

 

[Danceswithhelicopters]

A few hours watching James Burkes "Connections" from the 1970s and now available on YouTube will, I think, meet your definition of a Tech Tree.

 

[demented dale]

We've even got evidence of apes using sticks to poke out grubs, hit other apes with, threaten predators with ....

From the humble stick comes everything else! possibly, or did man pick up a stone first?

I still think the 'situation' defines what is developed when and why, and stuff is developed in parallel as well, seeded by different needs and desires.

But, picking up on TeeDee's 'what next' scenario we can go back to the basics of survival and identify what we need to invent to do that.

Food - so, I can dig up some roots with my hand, it hurts I use a stone, it's not long enough to get down, I use a stick. I hit a lizard with a stone, I eat it, the next one is too far away so I throw the stone, the next one is running so I throw a spinning stick. But now I want to catch that bigger animal, the stick bounces off - enter a pointed stick, I now need a cutting tool, enter the stone or bone scraper; the point isn't hard enough for the thick skin, enter a stick with an antler/bone/stone tip. I'm hunting in woods and throwing a spear is cumbersome - enter the blowpipe or the bow and arrow - they lasted tens of thousands of years but evolved to be lighter, faster, more powerful. If, I could get all the food I wanted with a digging stick, or the weather was always good enough not to need clothing, as would be the case in some areas of the world, I wouldn't need to develop the following technologies. Never has the term 'necessity is the mother of invention' been so true. But, these things happened over tens of thousands of years!

In 'lithic' Britain there was water everywhere - no need to invent the gourd bottle or the animal stomach water vessel - but in arid countries, and the need to cover distances to hunt, carrying water would be a priority, so different path of development.

In parallel, shelter - sticks and big animal hides, and cold drives the need for clothing, which comes from the success in hunting larger animals because we have bows (though, in Britain, I still maintain the need for clothing is driven by the need to run through bramble patches to hunt ).

I suspect fire was an accident - ooh, look, when I was trying to hit this flint with this funny rock it made the grass smoke (come on, tens of thousands of years of hitting flint with pyrites and you don't think man noticed it did something?). It only meant man didn't have to leave the cooling lands quite as quickly as before - maybe hung on in there for an extra thousand years or so. And of course, food was easier to eat and digest. But I don't think fire was invented out of need, it happened, and uses were developed out of opportunity.

And, there it could have rested until some imbecile invented farming when it all started to go wrong. But, that's another story.

I think man saw what happened to the crap bit of flint he threw away when it hit some iron ore and sparked He was off and running from that point and thank you Broch. You made some very intersting points I had not considered. xx