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Did Stone Age end

because we ran out of stones?

The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones, that is how Thomas L. Friedman named a chapter in his book Hot, flat, and crowded (2008). Although he used that expression only allegorically, the plain meaning of it looks oversimplified. I'm sympathetic but not entirely convinced. Why abandon stone tools which served well for 99% of human history? What actually started metal casting?

It is in our highly technical civilization, that we recognize progress as material things getting better and better. Could it be that metal casting happened from necessity, not as a progress? There is a room for rational doubt that availability of good stone, such as flint and obsidian, was limitless. And, not surprisingly, in the rich farmlands of southern Iraq where the use of copper and bronze developed early, all building materials (timber and stone) had to be imported. Ronald Wright in his book A short history of progress (2004) argues:

"In places where good stone such as flint and obsidian is abundant, the advantages of bronze do not necessarily outweigh the cost and effort of working it. But where all raw materials are imported from afar, bronze tools have the advantage of being endlessly reparable: a broken axe or blade can be recast or made into something else. Broken stone tools, by contrast, are mostly rubbish."

stone and sea at GR

And then the stone tools making was forgotten. French Meroving skeletons from the early Middle Ages show chronic starvation, partly because metal was reserved for weapons, leaving peasants who no longer knew how to make stone tools scratching the ground with wooden hoes and ploughs.

 2010-06-06 

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