I’ve recently watched a video of Tom Scott on his second channel where he made (with the help of a blacksmith) make a bottle opener.
The guy first made Tom to blacksmith a punch or whatever then he mentioned that “Blacksmiths had to make their own tools” or something among the lines anyways.
So it struck me. How did people make their first tools? Are there any records? Or were people just banging rocks to the metal, made a primitive sledgehammer then used that further on?
How did they even came up with the idea that if you put metal in fire you can *remodel* it?
In: 46
Probably a combination of an accident and knowledge/curiousity.
The first metal used by humans to make tools was copper.
Copper, in rare cases, could be found in metal forms on the surface. But copper ores could also be commonly found on the surface. And copper will start to soften at normal campfire temps, and could melt at the temperature of a roaring woodfire.
So, all that needs to happen is for someone to accidentally place one of these rocks near/in their fire. Or see a shiny bit of metal in a rock and put that near/in their fire.
And then notice after the first that the rock had changed and they could see shiny copper nuggets/pieces in the ore.
That random happenstance can spark curiosity, leading to more of these rocks getting put into more fire, hotter fires, these nuggets being gathered and placed in fire together. Noticing that they will melt together.
We don’t exactly know how that happened and how information spread, but it isn’t outlandish to think that this could happen.
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