Ponderings on sharing knowledge and skills

[Toddy]

Ah.....so a really unreal 'reality' show

I know folks who are truly skilled enough to live that way here.
None of them claim it's an easy life though.

While I mind though ? why naked ? humanity had gone clothed, for millennia. Certainly in our temperate climes. Is it just more for the 'shock' value, or titilation (shades of Frankie Howard there )
It all sounds very fake.

If you're out and about just now, look for the old leaves from Iris, from the reedmace. These will easily, well it's a bit of work, but once you know how it kind of just keeps growing, make decent cordage and basketry. Fairly easy to make mats with rushes, grasses, etc., once you have cordage. Just use it as the warps and pack in the rushes/grasses as the weft.

Nearest, truly happy to recommend, bushcraft/survival school to you is BackwoodsSurvival.
Patrick McGlinchey is one of the most skilled and inspiration practitioners I know

About Us - Backwoods Survival School

backwoodsurvival.co.uk

M

 

[SaraR]

Ah.....so a really unreal 'reality' show

I know folks who are truly skilled enough to live that way here.
None of them claim it's an easy life though.

While I mind though ? why naked ? humanity had gone clothed, for millennia. Certainly in our temperate climes. Is it just more for the 'shock' value, or titilation (shades of Frankie Howard there )
It all sounds very fake.

If you're out and about just now, look for the old leaves from Iris, from the reedmace. These will easily, well it's a bit of work, but once you know how it kind of just keeps growing, make decent cordage and basketry. Fairly easy to make mats with rushes, grasses, etc., once you have cordage. Just use it as the warps and pack in the rushes/grasses as the weft.

Nearest, truly happy to recommend, bushcraft/survival school to you is BackwoodsSurvival.
Patrick McGlinchey is one of the most skilled and inspiration practitioners I know

About Us - Backwoods Survival School

backwoodsurvival.co.uk

M

Yeah, whatever's supposedly happened, you're more likely to still have at least some clothes on you than you are finding yourself holding on to a machete.

 

[TLM]

Yeah, whatever's supposedly happened, you're more likely to still have at least some clothes on you than you are finding yourself holding on to a machete.

Well that depends ... but yes in the few episodes I have watched most participants suffer from sunburns and what really hinders things, no shoes. Grass can probably be used to make some kind of cape that would protect fairly well, I have no idea how easy it would be to make grass soled shoes, something like, but simpler, Spanish espadrillos.

 

[Deleted member 56522]

While I mind though ? why naked ? humanity had gone clothed, for millennia. Certainly in our temperate climes. Is it just more for the 'shock' value, or titilation (shades of Frankie Howard there )
It all sounds very fake.

As far as I can tell (from a UK bias), the earliest shows are things like Ray Meers who basically told a story "of survival" ... this group of people crashed and had to find their way out of the Australian bush. He then started focussing on the skills of survival.

Then, some mad ex army man called Ed Stafford deciding to insanely walk down the Amazon, through areas controlled by drug barons. He filmed it himself, and out of two years of filming ... he got about an hour of worthwhile footage which was then padded out to make a series.

Ed Stafford, needed money, and hit on the idea of living on a desert island for 60 days with nothing at all to help him. So no tools and no clothes.

By some miraculous coincidence, very soon after his series hit the airwaves, someone hit on the idea of putting a man and a woman naked in the wilderness with nothing but a knife (and one other thing). For who would want to have a whole program showing nothing but a grown man spending a fortnight attempting to cut down 100 saplings with a shell to make a shelter, because he didn't have a knife?

If you're out and about just now, look for the old leaves from Iris, from the reedmace. These will easily, well it's a bit of work, but once you know how it kind of just keeps growing, make decent cordage and basketry. Fairly easy to make mats with rushes, grasses, etc., once you have cordage. Just use it as the warps and pack in the rushes/grasses as the weft.

My main interest is in the development of technology. Anyone can make a basket when they have ideal materials and a tutor. Instead, I'm trying to understand the complexity of doing things when you have little idea what you are doing and far from ideal materials.

Cordage is another thing. I was making my own ropes from an old cococnut stuffed mattress and climbing them over 40 years. And, very often when I get bored, I would just pick up material like grass, ivy or nettles and start making cordage for fun. Indeed, when cutting down the hedge, I began to wonder if I could start creating a rope out of some of the finest shoots.

I have the problem working out how anyone could look at e.g. a coconut, and imagine that it could be used to produce a rope. (That clearly didn't happen ... they knew fibre could be used to make cordage long before they used fibres like coconut.)

 

[Toddy]

I think that once you have cordage, you can make pretty much anything. If you have stone/shell/bone for tools, cordage, clay and animal skins, then you have civilisation

 

[Deleted member 56522]

I think that once you have cordage, you can make pretty much anything. If you have stone/shell/bone for tools, cordage, clay and animal skins, then you have civilisation

I think as soon as women got hidden ovulation, men were doomed to become civilised.

 

[Toddy]

Matriarchal societies make a lot of sense and apparently happier all round and a lot less violent.

 

[Deleted member 56522]

Matriarchal societies make a lot of sense and apparently happier all round and a lot less violent.

Bonobos with overt ovulation spend a lot of their time having sex. Hidden ovulation doomed us to leave that paradise.

 

[Toddy]

Hah, I think you're mistaken there. There are matriarchal societies worldwide that are thriving.
I won't get into the discussion about religion and politics since they're a no-go on the forum, but it's not just intercourse, and permissions thereof, that changes societies.

Anyhow, on shared knowledge.
Opinions on the sheer volume of 'knowledge' freely available on Youtube ?

 

[Deleted member 56522]

Anyhow, on shared knowledge.
Opinions on the sheer volume of 'knowledge' freely available on Youtube ?

That is a huge question. Are you prompting discussion or is there some reason for your question/

 

[Toddy]

Well the thread is about sharing knowledge

I know we have members who have their own channels, and some are very good indeed.
I do hear folks railing agin Youtube offerings though, so I reckon it's a curate's egg of a thing.

 

[Deleted member 56522]

Well the thread is about sharing knowledge

I know we have members who have their own channels, and some are very good indeed.
I do hear folks railing agin Youtube offerings though, so I reckon it's a curate's egg of a thing.

There are some very good online videos, of which the best I've seen have been done by Asian people who show techniques that they, or at least people they know, still use. And to use a current interest: one had a very good video on producing a stone axe using some kind of sedimentary rock.

And, there are numerous videos on "flint knapping", and if you had some flint and wanted to start learning how to knap, as a hobby, I can see they would be ideal. But, they all are much of a muchness: they show how to make a flint tool using specialist tool. The problem with that approach, is that whilst the majority of stone tools found by archaeologists were in materials like flint, and whilst the specialist tools work well, the majority of the world does not live in an area where there is flint and most people don't have the tools. And so, if you had to make a bushcraft knife from rock, the rock almost certainly wouldn't be flint and you almost certainly won't have the tools.

 

[Toddy]

I live in Scotland, and I was an archaeologist. We have virtually no native flint in Scotland. There's one dyke at Bodum in Aberdeenshire, and there are the sea washed pebbles that sometimes come across from the Antrim coast. Any other flint, someone brought it here.
But, and it's a really important but, we have really good chert, Rhum bloodstone and Arran pitchstone, and good chert is as least as good a middling quality flint. Pitchstone is excellent, and the bloodstone is very sound.
Inuit are renowned for using slate for scrapers, knives, etc., so did the Egyptians for a while.

So, while I think you're right that you are unlikely to find flint here, (if you're on the Yorkshire coast it's a really different matter entirely. Nodules as big as curled up cat just washing out of the cliff faces.....been there, stood in stunned amazement at the riches and I could only carry two huge lumps ) there are many other very useable stones available.

You can chip a stone to a sharp edge, you can shape it to make a useable axe, and you can drill a hole through a stone pretty easily, just using a wooden stick and grit on the end of it to burr. I have twenty such stones sitting in my shed, they were made to be used as weights for a warp weighted loom

I think you're right though that all the flint knapping on youtube really misses all that potential of other materials. Maybe make a good thread here ?

M

 

[Deleted member 56522]

I live in Scotland, and I was an archaeologist. We have virtually no native flint in Scotland. There's one dyke at Bodum in Aberdeenshire, and there are the sea washed pebbles that sometimes come across from the Antrim coast. Any other flint, someone brought it here.

Strange, I live in Scotland (just North of you) and I just have to dig in my garden to find flint. Although that is not necessarily incompatible with your last sentence.

But, and it's a really important but, we have really good chert, Rhum bloodstone and Arran pitchstone, and good chert is as least as good a middling quality flint. Pitchstone is excellent, and the bloodstone is very sound.
Inuit are renowned for using slate for scrapers, knives, etc., so did the Egyptians for a while.

As I found on Arran, there is indeed pitchstone ... but the pitchstone that is there, is the dross that they left because it is totally useless for making tools. Same with the flint in Aberdeenshire .... totally useless. However, I have not tried Rhynie chert or Rhum bloodstone. Thanks,

So, while I think you're right that you are unlikely to find flint here, (if you're on the Yorkshire coast it's a really different matter entirely. Nodules as big as curled up cat just washing out of the cliff faces.....been there, stood in stunned amazement at the riches and I could only carry two huge lumps ) there are many other very useable stones available.

What most archaeologists fail to understand, because they just have their flint handed to them on a plate, or go to a place where they know it is available, is what life is like when you don't know where there is a source or worse, where you don't know what the resource is that you need (as when I tried to find copper ore).

To use another very simple example, I was looking for a source of local pottery clay. The year before I had literally camped next to a brick clay quarry, so it had never occurred to me that clay was difficult to obtain. But, the area where I live is glacial boulder clay. The river valleys here are boggy morasses so unsuitable. Eventually I had to find an area near the Clyde which could be accessed.

You can chip a stone to a sharp edge, you can shape it to make a useable axe, and you can drill a hole through a stone pretty easily, just using a wooden stick and grit on the end of it to burr. I have twenty such stones sitting in my shed, they were made to be used as weights for a warp weighted loom

Different stones have quite different results in terms of "sharpness". I must have a dozen hand axes sitting in the garden. I have hand spun wool yarn, but, I've only ever used a loom for weaving.

 

[Toddy]

I've never had flint handed to me on a plate yet, I've had to look for every blooming bit of it

I have flint from Aberdeenshire, taken from a nearby ditch, and it's really very good stuff.
It's not as good as the stuff from Yorkshire though.

I have Lanarkshire chert and it's excellent

Arran pitchstone is still available from the matrix. The rock is on the foreshore at Broddick and it's unmistakeable. Again, I have some and it's very, very good. I have some weathered pieces though and they're carp.
The same way the Portsoy marble weathers to become poor stuff. Yet that same stuff from inland, Greenstone hill, is brilliant to carve, but then it's unweathered.

Clay I've found everywhere from here to the Hebrides. It's variable, but it all makes pot of some kind. The best I've found is from my own home area Lanarkshire blue clay is brilliant stuff.
I've found pieces of what we call rotten pot, way up on the side of Tinto. Dated as best we can from the Neolithic. Not fired hard enough to properly ceramicise but firm enough if kept dry and frost free to last millennia. There are pots in Hamilton Museum that are still sound and solid, and simply hearth fired from local clay. Similarly over in Summerlee.

It's all back to know your own area. But in knowing your own area you start to recognise the signs that help you look for what you need. I think only experience, or a really good teacher, helps with that

You can finger weave wide braids/sashes very effectively. Those braids can be joined together to make cloth. African Kente weavers still join narrow lengths to do likewise.

There's a magnificent resource for folks who like to wander and search out minerals and the like.
The Victorian's did it very well (they really were exploiting the Industrial Age) and they surveyed and produced the mineral resource maps of the counties. The Geological Society have a lot of resources available.

I'll have a quick google, and I'll post some links you might like a nosey through.

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/browse?type=lcsubc&key=Mines%20and%20mineral%20resources%20%2D%2D%20Scotland&c=x

Record details | A summary of the mineral resources of the 'Crofter Counties' of Scotland, comprising Argyllshire, Caithness, Inverness-shire, Orkney and Shetland, Ross and Cromarty, and Sutherland | BGS publications | OpenGeoscience | Our data

webapps.bgs.ac.uk

I have to warn you though, if you don't already know this, but maps are blooming addictive things It's possible to easily loose days, weeks.... just scouring through them

 

[Deleted member 56522]

I've never had flint handed to me on a plate yet, I've had to look for every blooming bit of it

I have flint from Aberdeenshire, taken from a nearby ditch, and it's really very good stuff.
It's not as good as the stuff from Yorkshire though.

I have Lanarkshire chert and it's excellent

It was over 15 years ago I was searching for flint, so I can't remember the sources I used, but I went to Aberdeenshire and could not find a source of good flint. I am not aware of Chert in Lanarkshire

Arran pitchstone is still available from the matrix. The rock is on the foreshore at Broddick and it's unmistakeable. Again, I have some and it's very, very good. I have some weathered pieces though and they're carp.

All of the boulders on the foreshore were crap. And the reason they are just sitting there, whereas all the good stuff s gone, is because they are crap and no one wanted them.

Clay I've found everywhere from here to the Hebrides.
It's variable, but it all makes pot of some kind. The best I've found is from my own home area Lanarkshire blue clay is brilliant stuff.

Clay appears to be everywhere, until you start looking for reasonable quality clay for (rough) pottery, and need a place that can be reached easily and quiet enough so you can dig down into the clay without someone coming to ask what you are doing.

As far as I remember, the clay I eventually got, was filled with stones, so I then tried to process it to remove the stones. It eventually got used to make a furnace for smelting copper.

It's all back to know your own area. But in knowing your own area you start to recognise the signs that help you look for what you need. I think only experience, or a really good teacher, helps with that

I need to experience the landscape and technology in the way our ancestors did: without any knowledge at all of where to find materials or how to process them. A teacher in contrast directs the student down a path that is known to work. If they look for material, they go to places they know they can find resources, etc., The result is that a student taught that way never experiences the world as it was seen by our ancestors. Yes, a teacher makes learning much easier, but that is the point, learning was not easy.

There's a magnificent resource for folks who like to wander and search out minerals and the like.
The Victorian's did it very well (they really were exploiting the Industrial Age) and they surveyed and produced the mineral resource maps of the counties. The Geological Society have a lot of resources available.

The most valuable lesson I learnt was on Shetland looking for copper ore. I had asked where I could find the ore, and was told there was some in the wall next to the ferry (to Mousa broch). So, when waiting a searched that wall. I found nothing. So I went back to the guy and asked and he told me it was definitely there, but then gave me an idea of what I was looking for. It still took a long time, but eventually I found one tiny spec of Copper Pyrites. I then looked at the massive hole where the ore had been dug out from. Again, despite the many tonnes of copper that had been removed, there was not the slightest sign of copper. That taught me the valuable lesson: that all the material that I might be able to access, had been removed long ago so I was wasting my time going to old mines in the hope of finding ore. More importantly: despite all the advantages of modern life, it was still extremely difficult to find.

I have to warn you though, if you don't already know this, but maps are blooming addictive things It's possible to easily loose days, weeks.... just scouring through them

There is/was a list of Copper mines in Scotland.

 

[Toddy]

It's late, so this is a brief reply.
Chert was 'mined' in Lanarkshire, and there's a known site here.

Chert mine © Jim Ness cc-by-sa/2.0

A prehistoric chert mine with the Biggar gap and Tinto Hill beyond.

www.geograph.org.uk

Scotland, and Great Britain in truth, is rich in mineral wealth.

The Geology of these islands is fascinating.
The mines at Leadhills gave not only riches in silver but in copper and zinc too. It is believed that the Romans were among the first to mine there, but subsequent mining has removed any physical traces of it.

Leadhills – Scotland – the home of geology

www.scottishgeology.com

 

[Deleted member 56522]

It's late, so this is a brief reply.
Chert was 'mined' in Lanarkshire, and there's a known site here.

Chert mine © Jim Ness cc-by-sa/2.0

A prehistoric chert mine with the Biggar gap and Tinto Hill beyond.

www.geograph.org.uk

That's really useful. Looking at the Geological map, there is a line of Chert running SW-NE from that site.

Scotland, and Great Britain in truth, is rich in mineral wealth.

So is my desk (Obsidian, Felsite, Rhyolite, Quartzite,, Gabbro, Glass ... half a coconut & two crab shells)

The Geology of these islands is fascinating.
The mines at Leadhills gave not only riches in silver but in copper and zinc too. It is believed that the Romans were among the first to mine there, but subsequent mining has removed any physical traces of it.

Leadhills – Scotland – the home of geology

www.scottishgeology.com

I doubt the Romans were the first. I could go on, but I'd be straying into archaeology.

 

[Toddy]

It's the difference between industrial levels of exploitation and locals finding a useful resouce

My desk is usually pretty much the same state, tbh., though right now it's wool and cordage.

 

[grizzlyj]

A bush craft course I did a while ago showed us how to use a bow drill and a smaller hand drill. Even given the correct material it was still tricky, and being told you need xyz tree or shrub, dead standing, maybe died two or three years ago etc etc, you say ok, now I know what to look for. But in reality that just tells you how to do it in that class. I'm sure those materials didn't come from a short walk from that camp! I need to learn how to do it with what I have here, which may take some time
Regarding stone axes, one of the lovely museums in Stockholm has rooms of them, arranged by rock type. Amazing.