5,300-year-old 'bow drill' rewrites story of ancient Egyptian tools

Bow drills were still commonly used in India in 25 years ago.

Because electricity was unreliable and machinery was expensive.

Oarch 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For the curious, Clickspring has recreated something a lot like this and uses it on his Antikythera Mechanism videos on YT.

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toolslive 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's what a lot of engineers have been saying for decades: Looking at the surfaces of the artefacts, it's obvious more advanced tooling, than what was claimed by archaeologists, must have been used. Oh irony, the bits were already lying about in the museum's archive for a century.

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MarkusQ 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Quite frustrating how archeology swings over the years from "we'll believe anything" to "we won't accept any claim without a preserved example". While some of the excesses of the past were clearly excessive, drilled holes should have been sufficient evidence of drills, people living on islands should be sufficient evidence of boats, rope-worn bones should be considered evidence of rope and so forth.

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andrewflnr 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Balance would be nice, yes, but I think the conservative approach is closer to correct, especially given the natural human bias toward believing sensational theories.

	▲	mojomark 8 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's an interesting thought. I wonder if you can quantify this belief? That Weibull (presumably) distribution would be an interesting and useful thing to know.
	▲	twodave 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Maybe not closer to correct, but definitely less likely to admit errors. But sometimes the negative space around a particular thing becomes overwhelming. To me this is like circumstantial evidence—in general it’s weaker than physical evidence, but in high enough numbers it can serve.

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chmod775 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Given need, access to anything that might serve as string, pieces of wood, and too much time to think about the problem, most singular humans will come up with that within the year, if not within days.

That thing has probably been independently invented a hundred thousand times over. Trying to figure out who did it first is silly.

Also that is not a "sophisticated" tool at all. It's literally one step above hitting rocks together. Sharp rocks happens to be the only tool you need to make a basic bow drill.

	▲	andrewflnr an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Trying to figure out who did it first is silly. True. Good thing no one is trying to do that.
	▲	Brian_K_White an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Basic research is never silly.