IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS THE "FLAKE" RESEARCH STUDIES OF PRIMITIVE STONE TOOL MAKING WITH THIS BONOBO CHIMP IS ONE OF THE WAYS SCIENTISTS ARE SHEDDING LIGHT ON EARLY TOOL MAKING. PICTURE CREDIT R.A.SEVCIK AND THE LANGUAGE RESEARCH CENTER IN ATLANTA GEORGIA

Not long ago I was told an interesting story from someone who buys painted Australian aboriginal art. While he was riding in a car with a well known aboriginal artist a kangaroo was struck and killed. When they stopped the car the aborigine quickly jumped out and ran to the ditch where he searched for and found two rocks that were suitable for the job he was about to do. He then struck the rocks together to make a stone flake and walked over to the kangaroo where he then quickly cut off the tail with the sharp edge of the flake. He jumped back into the car making the comment that it was a good tail or he could use the tail or something like that. It's a great account of a spontaneous use of a stone tool in the modern world. I have heard other stories about using stone flakes from hunters who have experimented with skinning & butchering a deer or rabbit and experimental archaeologists doing the same thing with everything from goats to elephants. But the spontaneous manufacture and use of a stone tool from someone whose individual history is still so very close to the natural world is unique. The man who cut off the tail is a living monument of sorts who represents a still unbroken link to a simple stone tool making technology that reaches back in time millions of years. It's hard to believe but the sharpest knives that have ever been used in recent years were mounted with stone flakes made of obsidian. A company called Aztecnics was manufacturing and selling surgical scalpels mounted with different sizes and shapes of obsidian blades. Good quality obsidian fractures down to single molecules which can produce a cutting edge 500 times sharper than the sharpest steel scalpel blade ("American Medical News", Nov. 2, 1984:21). On the cellular level an obsidian knife can cut between cells rather than tear the cells as a steel knife will do. A sharper cut will allow a wound to heal more rapidly with less scarring. High magnification of a steel scalpel blade edge looks like a serrated saw blade but an obsidian edge looks smooth. I know an archaeologist who had some surgery done a few years ago using obsidian knives. In the tape of the operation at the initial cut to open the abdomen the doctor remarks "oouuu that's sharp"!