First tool: a rock someone found
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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Second tool: that same rock someone else found. But it's mine now.
Third tool: I copied that rock then took that rock with my rock. Now I have two of them.
Fourth tool: I make hundreds of tiny identical little pebbles and start handing them out to people to reward them for behavior that I agree with. Soon after, the tribe is divided into people with the little pebbles and people without.
This is a good shower thought, and I'm not knocking it.
A rock is a tool. A stick is a tool. Some rocks are naturally sharp (flint and obsidian) and are different kinds of tools. Any physical object found in nature could be a tool, and other animals exhibit tool use.
Taking two different kinds of rocks and carefully hitting one with the other can improve the naturally occurring tool, and I think that's why your thought is insightful (although, not unique). Knapping isn't rocket science, and it doesn't require anything more than one of several special kinds of rocks and a second rock, but it does require skill, and that comes through practice. I don't think it was probably a deep thought to think "I could make this sharp-edged rock more useful with a little chipping," but it certainly qualifies as "inventing inventing tools."
They had to invent inventing first.
Kinda what I was going for but I don't think I phrased it right.
Before that they had to invent invent inventing.
meaning they had to have a concept of inside and ventilation, which is wild. how else would they have invented in vent?
The start of all survival games:
Make axe.
Punch tree
Press E to gather
In The Long Dark, making an improvised axe is more a midgame item. Gotta find a forge and a heavy hammer, then enough coal. Not to mention stocking up food and water for the wait while you heat it up and craft it.
Sounds like someone wanted to make the experience very legit.
This reminds me of a short story/presentation by computer scientist Ken Thompson titled, "Reflections on Trusting Trust".
It's worth reading but basically we use software to create software. We trust that the software we use to create software can be trusted. We have the source code, but that's just words on paper, it doesn't do anything. We have to use software to turn that code into software.
To light a campfire take a burning stick and apply it to the pile of tinder and dry wood. Where do you get a burning stick? Place one in a campfire.
I like to talk about this in my CS classes. We get compiles to compile code by compiling a compiler with a compiler. It's an infinite regression problem that terminates with someone writing a compiler in assembly... Which requires an assembler to assemble... So you write an assembler in machine code directly on the processor.
If we lost all of the currently compiled programs one day, even with the compiler source code in hand, it would be some serious work to rebuild our current tool chains.
I've never met anyone who doesn't pick up a stick or a rock during a hike. We've been gathering our own tools for hundreds of thousands of years and that curiosity and ingenuity is bone deep for us as a species.
They used natures bounty as tools to invent tools to invent more tools
"Let's invent a thing inventor", said the thing inventor inventor after being invented by a thing inventor.
Sure. But inventing tools doesn't require you to have tools, so it doesn't make it more impressive.
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.
How will you make the UV lights for your tanning station? /s
Use the big UV light in the sky.
With the sharpest and shiniest axe I can make, and then I'll reflect the sun's beams onto people's butts
That's basically what the How to Make Everything YouTube channel is about.
They are only inventing tools. They are not inventing the concept of inventing tools.
Still very cool and impressive
Fair point. Missed an "invent" in your title 😅.
grog did it in a cave! with a box of flint!
I mean, a good enough rock can be considered a tool. Same as an antler or a bone.
That happened so long ago that we wouldn't even call those people "human".