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PALEOLITHIC STONE TOOLS

In the paleolithic era, stone tools are often classified by tier: Mode 1 (Oldowan), Mode 2 (Acheulean), Mode 3 (Mousterian), Mode 4 (Aurignacian), Mode 5 (Microlithic).

Despite the fact that they are tiered by complexity, not all the stone tools are precisely intercangeable. For instance, later mode tools were sharper and smaller, whereas earlier tools were blunter and larger. Consequently, it is rather important to describe the types of tools that were manufactured in each of these settings.

For simplicity's purposes, Olodwan (Mode 1) = chipped stone. Usage of higher quality materials like flint were not widespread, and the source materials for these tools are relatively widespread and could be found in river beds.

The chipped stone can be typified by the "Chopper" tool -- suitable for cutting, chopping, and scraping. This is the most primitive multipurpose stone tool form. However, it was not particularly sharp, rather small, could not be easily repaired, and had a high degree of inconsistency/variability with regards to its manufacture.

In Acheulean (Mode 2), the "Hand-axe" is the upgraded form of a "Chopper". Hand-axes are multipurpose tools that could be used for digging up roots, cutting/smashing killed animals, boring hides, etc. Acheulean tools are made from higher quality starting materials than Oldowan, and utilize a larger lithic core that could be quarried or mined. Acheulean tools are manufactured with greater predictability, and the shapes can be quite consistent. Additionally, Acheulean technology allowed the "retouching" of damaged stone tools, repairing them slightly.

At this point I will discuss more specialized stone tools. Regardless of the technology tier, the type of stone tools that can be produced can be classified by the size of the starting material. A "Core Tool" (that originates from the larger piece of knapping) includes Choppers, Cleavers, Picks, and Handaxes. A "Flake Tool" (that originates from the smaller piece) includes Bores, Points, and Scrapers. Finally, a "Blade Tool" (arises in Mode 4 Aurignacian tech) includes Blades and Burins.

Of these tools, "Choppers" and "Handaxes" are relatively multipurpose (with handaxes being capable of fulfilling most functions). However, these are not specialized tools, and consequently not as good as the specialized tool variants. Consequently, the game should account for this by applying a debuff when a multipurpose tool is used for a specialized purpose.

A Cleaver has a flat strike surface (is generally heavier), and ideal for butchering animals/chopping into bone marrow.

A Pick has a thick end (think trianglular prism), and was ideal for digging into the ground; a little like a shovel.

A Bore is used as an awl to poke holes in hide.

A Point is the generic term for anything sharpened to a point, like an arrowhead.

A Scraper is a tool used to scrape hides.

A Blade is a multipurpose cutting tool. Sharp.

A Burin is a tool that is great for engraving and working with wood/bone/antler.

EARLY PALEOLITHIC: ACHEULEAN LITHIC TECHNOLOGY

The second tier of stone age lithic technology (after Oldowan) is Acheulean, which also corresponds to the Early Paleolithic period.

Under the Acheulean Industry, several advancements were made to to lithic technology. The first change was that early humans started to use larger and dedicated lithic cores to produce tools, implying that humans spent a lot more time and energy searching for the best materials to make stone tools. No longer did people just pick up any old rock from the river bed. Notably, this is the period during which we see many more flint and chert tools -- the classic preferred materials in the European stone age.

A typical Acheulean hand-axe was around 8 inches long (over double the size of Oldowan), and originated from a "lithic core" ~12 inches long. Many of these "lithic cores" were furthermore obtained from an even larger "flint nodule", which was potentially dug out from a flint mine (see prior post on distribution of flint) or other large rock source.

By focusing on higher quality stone, the production of tools could be much more precise and predictable.

Additionally, Acheulean flintnappers started using wood and bone "soft hammers", which allowed increased fine-control. Particularly, soft hammers were critical for thinning large lithic cores into a manageable shape. Acheulean techniques also led rise to the "tranchet flaking" method, which allowed for the sharpening and "retouching" of old stone tools that weren't possible in the Oldowan industries.

Acheulean stone tools were unquestionably sharper and larger than Oldowan tools, and they could be "repaired" a limited amount of times.

However, a sharper edge also meant more fragile (given that stone tools fracture easily). Consequently, Acheulean stone tools were generally more intended for cutting than hitting (e.g. hand axes for skinning a hide).

TECH TREE PROJECT: OVERVIEW OF LITHIC TECHNOLOGIES

The paleolithic era is characterized by control of fire and usage of stone tools. Consequently, they are earliest preserved tools in the "tech tree" of humanity, and in fact were utilized by pre-hominids in the Homo genus. Chimpanzees have also been observed using stone tools (albeit primitively). Importantly, despite the fact that there is a disproportionate focus on stone tools in the archaeologic record, this does not rule out the fact that early hominids likely also used wooden and other perishable tools.

Early hominids had different physiologies and lifestyles than modern humans, and these characteristics are important to keep in mind while evaluating early stone tools. Scientists believe that proto-humans had less fine motor control and a weaker grip. In some aspects, proto-humans probably resembled chimpanzees.

Currently, proto-humans of the early/middle-paleolithic were believed primarily to be omnivores, with a majority of the diet attributed to nuts, berries, tubers, and honey. Their diet was supplemented by scavenging prey taken down by other predators, and early stone age proto-humans are not believed to have done much hunting of their own. Proto-humans utilized tools for many of these circumstances.

Hominids could eat nuts by crushing them with rocks.

Hominids could eat tubers by digging them up with sticks (few surface animals have this capacity to dig this deep into the ground).

Hominids could scavenge carcasses, cut hide, scrape, and split bone marrow with sharp stone tools.

Years ago, I performed back-of-the-envelope efficiency calculations on various foods and determined that calorie-poor foods (e.g. berries, dandelion greens, cattail tubers) are not feasible staples for a human diet. Particularly, humans would have to spend a majority of their time constantly eating (think herbivores; bears eat 30,000 berries in a single day) if they tried to live off of such diets. To fulfil a 2000 calorie diet on solely on something like Lingonberries (5 cal/oz), assuming that berries are mostly water, and individual would have to eat ~3.1 gallons (11.8 liters) of berries in a single day. Note that the human stomach only has a capacity of ~4 liters, so a person would sooner be retching than reach the necessary caloric requirement on berries.

(All of this aside, humans have a great capacity to fast without food -- so not eating for a few days won't kill anybody -- however the 2000 calorie diet is the benchmark for the amount of calories a person needs to eat on average over a long time to maintain their body weight).

For reference, here's some values for various meats:

    Clams (10 cal/clam) - Need to eat 300 clams per day for 3000 calories
    Egg (75 cal/egg) - Need to eat 40 eggs per day for 3000 calories
    Squirrel (132 cal/animal) - Need to eat 23 squirrels per day for 3000 calories
    Rabbit (790 cal/animal) (1 lb meat) - Need to eat 4 rabbits per day for 3000 calories
    1 ft long river fish (960 cal/animal) (1 lb meat) - Need to eat 3 fish per day
    Salmon (5760 cal/fish) (6 lbs meat) - 1 salmon lasts one person for 2  days
    Turkey (7200 cal/animal) (10 lbs meat) - 1 turkey lasts one person for 2.5 days
    Deer (59,360 cal/animal) (70 lbs meat) - 1 deer lasts one person for 20 days
    Bear (68,800 cal/animal) (100 lbs meat) - 1 bear lasts one person for 23 days

In short, don't count on trapping squirrels to sustain your wildnerness diet. More likely than not, you would burn more calories chasing squirrels than than you get from the ones you catch. Opportunity cost is a critical consideration when considering hunter-gatherer diets.

By observing the behavior of the modern-day Hazda hunter gathers, we observe that nobody in the tribe would spend their entire day picking berries in the berry fields (it's not efficient) or hunting squirrels. However, as tribe members migrate through the wild focusing on calorie-rich foods, they won't hesitate to grab berries off of the bushes they pass without even stopping (constantly on the move!). Nobody would deny free food if it's right in front of them. However, certain things aren't worth dedicated effort to go out of your way for.

In either case, I've derailed enough.

Onto paleolithic cultures and technologies.

EARLY PALEOLITHIC: OLDOWAN LITHIC TECHNOLOGY

The earliest lithic tools are categorized as part of the Oldowan industry.

Oldowan stone tools were predominantly made from local stone materials, typically found in river beds. Flint/Chert was not necessary in this period, and in fact a majority of stone tools were made from lesser quality stones that fracture (e.g. quartzite, basalt, etc.) less predictably or are less sharp. Keep in mind depending on your area, flint could be a rare resource.

Consequently, the inability to precisely control lithic fractures (in part due to poor quality starting materials) meant that stone tools had to be made from pebbles/rocks that were already approximately the shape of the final tool. For instance, an axe-shaped river rock was used to make a hand-axe. Consequently, this also meant that making stone tools in the Oldowan period included a laborious search for the perfectly shaped rock for a certain tool. Furthermore, only a subset of rocks fracture according to planes. Additionally, the process was error prone and difficult to control.

It was rare to make more chips than necessary on Oldowan tools.

Formula: Lithic stone (many different stones can be used, usually a river stone) + hammerstone = flake + sharp stone + debris

Depending on the type of tool, either the flake or the core was used. "Choppers" (hand-axes) were likely fashioned from the large fragment. "Scrapers" were likely fashioned from the flakes.

Stone tools such as these were not particularly sharp. They were thick, pebble-sized, and have a lot of variation from tool-to-tool. Whether or not a sharp-edge formed was probably semi-random.

Despite being called "hand-axes", it probably wasn't appropriate to use such tools for heavy concussive purposes. Stone tools chip and shatter easily, especially lithic stone tools (used more for cutting things like skinning carcasses than hitting), and the lifespan of a lithic tool would be quite short if it was indeed used for whacking against trees. More likely -- ground stone ("harder" stone rather than "sharper" stone) was used for such heavy purposes, which I will discuss some other day. Takeaway point: hand-axe is for cutting (or gentle chopping), not hitting as hard as your can!

I’ve gotten (almost) stuck inside a town too.

Eve/grinder/raider from another town came and claimed all the gates. Before anyone noticed, all the gates were shut and locked and no one could get out.

It’s part of the reason I dislike property twigs — I’d be fine with it if the game didn’t try to pretend anythng and just said these were magical forcefield sticks that project an impenetrable plasma forcefield. When I locked inside of a town, I stare at the sticks and find it ridiculous that we can’t get out of our own fence.

They look super flimsy. A little kick and they should fall over!

But no. We’ll just starve to death inside because we can’t remove our own rickety sticks.

It’s incredibly immersion breaking, you know?

Well, by the time you have enough knowledge for those advanced things, you've probably gotten to the point where you're comfortable leaving town.

Pine pitch glue!

I also agree that there are ways to implement marriage without restricting oneself too deeply according to social constructs.

In my view, if a fertile male/female pair mutually “marry”, the main outcome should be a fertility boost (and the family tree added for the male).

To marry, both players type /MARRY YOURNAME in close proximity. Maybe this could display a special heart icon when this is done.

Any two people could do this action (this enabling LGBT marriages), but the lineage/fertility effects are only applied if it’s a male-female pairing, both are fertile, and the couple is at least separated by two-degrees of relatedness (e.g. first cousin... pick a degree!).

Players could /MARRY someone else at any time, annulling the previous effect.

Only the most recent marriage pair is considered active. For polygamous couples, I guess players would have to /MARRY back and forth and take turns.

Off the wall idea: marker stones.

Hit a home marker with a magic rock and now the magic rock will point to the marker whenever you are holding it. Maybe you could pass this along to your children or other people.

Or perhaps you find a body in the wilderness and a marker stone they dropped, and it points somewhere, but where does it lead?

Maybe it’s something on your local side? Perhaps someone in your network chain is blocking the server.

I’m not even sure if OHOL has the capability to block players?

Haha I didn't realize that people felt that way. XD

Personally, I would love to see something like a procedural-ish tech tree. OHOL always appealed to me because of the "parenting" and "teaching" aspects, so in this sense I really love anything that emphasizes the bond between a parent and their child. I always felt it was kind of silly that a 5-year-old baby can run off and start smithing immediately (and to be fair, I'm one of those kids...). I feel like there's some untapped potential in terms of how currently in OHOL, the extent of a mom-child interaction is really just dressing them and asking if they're new. I feel like it would be nice if there was something a little bit more on top of this.

Childhood, to me, is a time of rapid learning -- so I've been wondering about the possibilities of what kinds of vertical transmission could be better incorporated into the game. Languages have that kind of vertical transmission -- and I'd love to see a lot more of that kind of thing!

Regarding a limited non-proc-tech-tree, what if:

- There was a success rate associated with each action.
- If your "experience points" (heritable) are lower, there's an increased chance of failure.
- Higher-tier/complicated recipes have increased chance of failure.
- For instance, picking gooseberries is super easy/intuitive, so there's a virtual 0% chance of failure.
- For instance, you maybe you try to bake pies, but you have a chance to burn them.
- Children absorb "experience points" in activities simply just by watching. Therefore, by standing in a bakery during childhood, they're naturally absorb experience points watching people bake.
- Children absorb "experience points" from their mother (or anybody carrying) as she holds and *talks* to them.

You could also start Eve's with excellent foraging/wildlife skills:

- For instance, very good at starting fires from scratch
- For instance, good at snaring rabbits
- For instance, cooking over coals (as opposed to a stove)

And in the mean time, you can apply a skill decay if a person doesn't use skills. Over many generations in a modern future, people might lose the ability to start fires easily (e.g. many failed tries before they succeed), or they might lose talent with a bow if society starts to use guns.

The tradeoff would be for enriched "experience points" in advanced topics like engineering, smithing, etc. An eve might be "bad" at these topics (e.g. higher failure rate, kind of like the oil drill failure rate), although a modern factory worker would probably be conversely bad at shooting a bear. The heritability of skills, particularly from your mother (whoever carries you), encourages the type of play where kids would have a strong incentive to socialize and bond with the adult they want to "apprentice" with (meanwhile your mom likely wants you to inherit the family business and family legacy"). Also this would give a reason for old grannies to pick up kids and just talk about anything, as the skills get transferred at a certain rate by osmosis.

I think it would make a much more colorful society too. When you need a hoe, you're more likely to go looking for the best smith in town to ask them to make it for you, because perhaps you don't want to risk the 25% chance that you screw up doing it yourself (wasting materials). I think this reflects reality too -- in theory we could do maintenance on our own cars at home in our garages (especially if you're good at it), but I take mine to the bodyshop because I trust the pros to do a better job than I can. And obviously I don't want to break my car.

But then again -- this is solely what I would find interesting for a game like OHOL -- idk if others feel the same way as me.

I ended up watching the video and enjoyed it quite a bit!

As for OHOL, we currently lack any systemic means of vertical transmission of technology. Everyone (all players) know how to make everything on the technology tree at birth, which effectively means technology itself in OHOL cannot inherently improve or decay. Rather, the limiting factor is more so resources (e.g. iron) rather than technology.

I would love to see a system that diversifies technology tree knowledge around OHOL players.

For instance, perhaps not all players would know all the recipes at birth, and instead the recipes that a character knows are partially inherited from one's parents, leading to a gradual specialization of each life in OHOL.

In one game, you might have a deep baking tree because your ancestors did tons of baking, and you can make the fanciest and best pies for thousands of tiles around. You can continue the family tradition (and pass on those skills to your children), or you can boldly refuse to be boxed in by the family trade and instead be mediocre at something else (idk, ice fishing?).

In another game, you might be a Newcomen engineer descended from a family of engineers.

Or perhaps a tailor.

I'd love to see built-in systems that make some parts of the technology tree accessible to some players are not others. I'd love to see greater emphasis on "teaching" your kid to pass on your family trade. I'd also like to see the slow, painstaking, and tedious process of research it takes advance your field to the next step. Upgrading from a deep well to newcomen pump for the first time should take generations of effort and gradual research that is vertically transmitted. It'd be awesome inherit great grandpa's "research notes" on the Newcomen Atmospheric Core prototype -- the first one ever made in the world -- and know that if those papers are lost, perhaps decades of research will be lost forever.

And maybe even after the first Newcomen is made, civilization could collapse if you don't bother to teach your kid those important lessons from the past -- fighting against your kid's complaints that "the technology is obsolete, why should I learn it?!" -- and all of those cute fun things. xD