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Now find the spearehed, please! Is it possible? What are the chances? Was bronze age production heigh enough?

• inglor_cz 6mo ago
  Most ancient metalwork got recycled again and again, so while there is a chance, it would be pure luck. BTW if you visit some archeological museum, the difference between Stone Age tools and Bronze Age tools is quite striking. In the Stone Age, each tool looks different, while by the Bronze Age, the spearheads etc. are so uniform that they could have been produced in a modern factory.
  • card_zero 6mo ago
    Yes and no. Here's a pile of 19 polished stone axes: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Malone_hoard.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Malone_hoard.JPG They're admittedly different sizes, but the intent to churn them out is clear. These things were ambiguously tools or currency: they were transported long distances and hoarded. There was another, older, stone age industrial site in France that produced thousands of beads. The way I remember it*, there was evidence that they fed themselves by trading beads for food. It's interesting to me that a stone age lifestyle might for some people resemble factory work. *My apologies if I'm confabulating this. I think it was in the Loire Valley. I need to track down what exactly I'm half-remembering here.
    • inglor_cz 6mo ago
      This is an interesting counterexample, thank you. It seems that in some places, some standardization was already present back then.
    • PepperdineG 6mo ago
      >It's interesting to me that a stone age lifestyle might for some people resemble factory work. There was not only factory work but unpleasant factory work like making birch tar and rendering fat.