flint hunt and respect

[GlisGlis]

Sunday I went flint hunting in a place a geologist pointed me out
I found the place and some nice layers of flint so I started to collect and examine it.
to my frustration almost every bit of flint I could detach was allready brittle, fractured or badly damaged by weather and expositions to elements
I must confess I did not have an heavy hammer but it would be very difficult to reach the most integer part and be able to detach it anyway
I went home with a handfull of flakes. I allready broke most of them. So far I have just a fingertip size birdarrow.

All that made me think about our ancestors and the huge amount of knowledge and handicraft.
They knew the places, they knew the materials and they used them to the fullest.
All things i allready pondered. This time learned the hard way   
Great respect for those who lived long ago!

[Zuma]

What is suprising to me is--
Man knapped rock for some 3 million years.
But the way it was done evaporated in the last 400.
You would think forming flint would be genetic.
Zuma

[Orrum]

At Nethers farm in Flint Ridge Ohio the pits are dug down snd you see where ancient man built fires against the face to heat the stone. Then the threw water or snow to get it to crack and pop off. Then they used deer antlers to wedge pieces off by driving them in! It's an amazing sight! I tried digging with a steel pry bar and chisels with various Hamer and it was tough!

[nclonghunter]

That's way back when Men were Men and Mammoths were scared!!!

Collecting Rhyolite in NC is an endeavor as well. The Morrow Mountain site is a round peak on top of a mountain. Debitage surrounds that peak and flows for hundreds of yards down the sides like molten lava. On the very top there is no Rhyolite to be found on the surface other than scattered debitage. I can only imagine that large boulders or a large outcropping has been completely used over thousands of years. It is amazing to see all the debitage on the sides of that mountain. The only other possibility may be they carried the rock up to the peak and processed it there for some reason, but that doesn't make sense to me.