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?
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Fun fact: we can identify smiths by their burials. In ancient, but historical, times smiths were buried with their tools because they were thought to be haunted. This has allowed us to extrapolate to prehistoric burials that were populated by the same grave goods, four THOUSAND years before those historic burials.
melted lead was found at cooking sights that predate chemically tanned leather, (called veg tan today, it’s still done basically the same way today as like a bizzilan years ago just in bigger batch, and with more consistency). veg tan leather predates homosapians.
lead melting lead was likely a “toy” around a camp fire. melting at about 650, to 700 the first set of tongs,( the most important metal working tool) were likely molded in sand then filled with lead. and then filled with solid lead then melted, probably with the intent of making a cooking tool
Just a note. I see comments saying that metal working could have been discovered accidentally. Please be very skeptical about such claims. It’s folk archeology. While accidents happen, it’s highly improbable that people would have just accidentally put metal ore in campfire so hot that the metal would melt and then they would see its melted form and recognize its usefulness.
Watch Primitive Technology on YouTube. The guy starts with stone and clay tools and moves to iron age. It is incredible.
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