• tetris11@lemmy.ml
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    7 days ago

    Inventing tools to invent other tools is not hard. I can make an axe and then use that to make a tanning station in a day.

    Reproducibility and scale is the issue. Making the SAME axe at volume is difficult. You need to heavily standardise your source materials and there just aren’t that many flat-shaped rocks out there.

    I do beam with pride though knowing that our stone-age ancestors figured out how to reliably mix metals to elevate them to bronze-age status, and then they took that and started casting motherfucking iron of all things.

    Sure, it was done mostly out of warfare and dominion over others, but their scientist/engineers at the time must have taken some pride in knowing they eased the burden for farmers and carpenters with better tools.