Primitive Bone Awl: survivor from the stone age?

Today I'm making a bone awl using only primitive stone age techniques.

First I placed a large cow bone on an anvil stone, then using a hammer stone the bone was broken into 2 pieces, one of these pieces will become the awl. Then using a hammer stone, I struck a number of sharp flakes from a large piece of quarzite, a common stone that I have found almost everywhere.

Now the hard part begins, using these flakes, I scored deep grooves along both sides of the bone. This is a labor intensive process that took me an hour. Eventually, the scoring was done and a few light taps with a hammer stone separated the blank from the rest of the bone.

the next steps is to abraid this blank against a grinding stone. This stage is also labor intensive, taking half an hour, but eventually I had the basic shape of the awl. The final stage is to polish the awl using a conk fungus, making the tip as fine and as smooth as possible.

Here is the finished product, so how well does it work?

The bone awl punched clean holes through leather.
It can be used as a pressure flaking tool to make arrow heads
It's also great for stabbing random objects.

The bone awl is a very practical wilderness surival tool that can be made from common materials. This tool is at least 30,000 years old, it's one of the key technologies that allowed humans to colonize the northern hemisphere. What is intriguing to me is the how long the bone awl was used. Contemporary technologies to the bone awl such as stone celts, bow drills, and the atlatl dissapeared from common usage thousands of years ago, yet the bone awl due to a combination of low cost and high utility remained in wide spread use in Eurasia up to the beginning of the industrial revolution. Anyway, thanks a bunch for watching, if you like this video please like, share, and subscribe, see you laters!

[TheTribeOfBenjamin]

Very cool! Nicely done! Like that pretty color

[evanflynn]

I know I'm kind of late to the video, but you may be surprised to know that there are plenty of leather workers who still use bone tools like this. There are plastic and metal versions but they aren't as good or long lasting as bone tools. In fact, the more you use the bone tools they actually improve the job they do, edge burnishing leather especially. Being a tool made from a part of an animal they can break easier from misuse, but if they are treated carefully, they are tools that can last far longer than any other material used to make a similar tool.

[kristiandanielson]

Just wanted to say i LOVE your videos :)

[cjjcbj]

Hey! Do you know any good stones that can be good in the state of Nevada that can work good as a sharp blade? If you do tell me 👋

[cjjcbj]

Well if you ever go to Nevada make a video and try to find some nice stones thanks!

[landroamer]

If you some the bone in water it will soften up and be easier to work.

[gabeerspamer]

What did you do with the rest of the cow bone?

[jeffreydyer]

Wow that would be great for a spear head and could be good for fish because it wouldn’t get soft when wet like wood

[stoneageschool]

Love the video! Did you make an arrowhead or did you just pressure flake the edge to show that it works?

[melonicrandomizer]

Where do you fins those bones? i would want to make one but i dont have bones around, do i need to buy bones from somewhere?

[siskaa]

Hello.. i want to ask you about technology make Bone tools. I'm Indonesian student 😁