The human race has come a long way since we first developed stone tools around 2.6 million years ago. With inventions like smartphones and the internet, it’s clear we’re not just banging rocks together in a cave anymore! But how did those primitive tools and techniques, like the ones that first sparked fire or caught a fish, compare to what we use today? Let's find out.
Fire Starters
Just about everybody knows how to use a match. With a head made from potassium chlorate, when struck against a red phosphorus strip, the combination causes them to ignite through friction in less than a second. Easy peasy. But when it comes to primitive devices, fire-starting takes on a wide range of forms.
Like most fires, these methods rely on the three simple components of the fire triangle: heat, oxygen, and fuel. But the heat that comes from these primitive, friction-based methods can take a lot of elbow grease! The hand-drill method, for example, is one of the oldest known fire-making techniques. It involves rolling a spindle between your palms with a dull point pressing against a fire board. The heat from the friction between the two gradually begins to build up, and the fire-starter must watch for smoke.
Hand Drill Friction Fire: How-to guide for the UK. by Leigh Robinson When the smoke finally appears, it indicates that a hot ember has been created, which can be used to set fire to dry tinder. While the experts makes it look easy, it can easily take more than 10 minutes to get going. That’s a far cry from the fraction of a second it takes to strike a match! Although the hand-drill method may just seem like a cool camping trick, the origins behind this fire-starting solution date back over 9,000 years to the age of Neolithic Man! Thankfully, though, after countless generations of blistered palms from rolling spindles, there were a few developments to the process throughout history.
Bow drills use flexible plant fiber rope attached to a stick and secured up top with another piece of wood to increase the stability and speed of the spindle’s rotation. But if you want to go even faster, the pump drill employs a counterweight and string attachment on the spindle. This means with just a push, the spindle quickly rotates in one direction before being spun back in, making it much quicker and easier to produce a lot of friction.
Primitive BUSHCRAFT, NO TOOLS, Made Cord Drill and Pump Drill, Camping in Tiny Shelter by Survive Alone With an alternative friction technique like the fire plough, however, no spindle or spinning is needed at all! In this method, a hard wooden shaft is rubbed up and down the length of a groove cut into softer wood. This pushes out wood dust particles, and these ignite as the temperature increases from friction.
Fire Plow: Tips and Tricks by Fire and Fungi But one of the most intriguing pre-modern fire lighting techniques is the fire piston. These were developed in southeast Asia, and rely on a piece of tinder stuck into the end of a hollow stick. The stick is rapidly slammed into a larger, hollowed-out stick, and a coating of oil or grease creates an airtight seal. The sudden compression of the sealed air causes the temperature to rise quickly to over 400 degrees Fahrenheit, which sets the tinder alight!
Wood & bamboo fire pistons, demo by maker by Sepuh Crafts Primitive Pottery
About 9,000 years ago, our ancestors realized that living, eating, and drinking literally hand-to-mouth wasn’t the best approach to water and food. So, they began making bowls and jugs out of the clay from under their feet. Pottery like this is still widely used today, but without consulting any craft shops or blogs, how would you begin making pottery primitive style?
First up, if the pots need a consistent shape, they’ll require a pottery wheel. Seeing as you’re not likely to find one in the wild, one primitive solution uses two large segments of flat limestone, and some manpower. Two small divot can be driven into the segments using a harder rock, such as flint. Then, by ingeniously placing in smaller, harder stone, like this quartz pebble, in between the two to act as a pivot, it creates a static base and a spinning top!
Primitive pottery 1: Potter's wheel from limestone slabs ⚱️ by Make It Primitive Clay can then be harvested in either a wet or dry state, from the ground or from places like riverbeds where the necessary minerals have formed from contact with water, air, or steam. Clay can be identified relatively easily as it sticks firmly together in a wet and pliable state, and once it’s been given a rough shape it can be finished on the pottery wheel.
As ingenious as the primitive pot looks, that’s a lot of labor for just one small clay container! Luckily, humans have developed techniques in more recent centuries to take some of the panic out of ceramic! Like the electric potter’s wheel. Instead of being powered by people, electric wheels have motors that can spin at a rate of up to 240 rotations per minute and beyond. This fast, steady rotation means that the clay can be molded uniformly as it spins, allowing modern masters to create incredibly symmetrical looking shapes!
Textile Craft
If a clothing apocalypse struck, leaving you unable to buy wool clothing like sweaters or a scarves from a store, would you be able to make some yourself? And no, tying a raw wool to your body toga-style doesn’t count.
To make a start, you’d need to gather raw wool by shearing sheep. Once it’s picked and cleaned to remove any burrs or other plant fibers, it’s combed through in a process called carding. This picks the wool apart, turning the coarse lumps into fine and fluffy fibers ready for spinning. This is when the wool is wrapped around a spindle, stretched out, and twisted onto a spool.
Spinning wool by Navajo Pollen Trail From here, it’s time to start weaving, which is where the impressive primitive techniques come in. Weaving is an ancient craft, and woven fibers were made over 34,000 years ago! Some of the earliest techniques involved finger weaving braided threads together horizontally and vertically. This is a time-consuming process. But these types of patterns are what inspired the development of the loom, a type of weaving device first used around 8,000 years ago in China. Different parts of the loom can move to lift different threads, allowing the weaver to shuttle the thread they’re using between the layers in one swift movement.
Craft Boutique - How To Use Our Weaving Loom Kit / Tapestry Loom Set by Craft Boutique Larger versions of the traditional loom incorporate a series of pedals to allow more complex variations of thread patterns. As hypnotizing as the whole process is, its potential usefulness is heavily reliant on the speed and experience of the weaver. This is where modern electric looms really pick up the pace. Instead of the hands of a weaver, a jet of air propels the yarn across the threads, guided by the machine’s electronically-automated movements. Electric looms do all of this so fast that the machines process about 5,250 ft of thread per minute! Needless to say, things are a tad quicker these days when it comes to looms.
Baskets
In an age before the rucksack kings of Jansport, Osprey, and Berghaus, how did people carry all their stuff around? Without the commodity of lightweight, heavy-duty backpacks, humans, possibly as far back as 26,000 years ago, began weaving together plant fibers to make strong and sturdy baskets. But as complex as some designs can look, a small, basic basket is relatively simple to make by hand using primitive techniques!
First, you need several lengths of flexible fiber that will bend and keep their shape, like vines, stems, willow, or even animal hair. In the video clip below, survivalist Paco Warabi has used blackberry vines, which is neat if you don’t mind the odd thorn!
Quick and Easy Blackberry Bramble Basket by PacoWarabi
The process begins by placing half of your vines on top of the others, twisting a vine around the crossed section in an under-over pattern to create a base. Once the base is wide enough, you’ll need to spread out the spokes evenly and bend them upwards. Gradually, more vines are weaved in to build up the sides. Once it’s reached the necessary height, the spokes are bent into one another, forming the basket’s top edge. While baskets like these can be made relatively quickly, they’re more suited for collecting berries than for big tasks. Larger models like these traditional Lebanese woven baskets work on a similar design, but they incorporate more layers for greater structural integrity, making them take slightly longer to construct. Even more intricate designs, like this traditional African Zulu basket in the clip below, hand-woven from Ilala palm, can take as long as several months to create! There’s surely a weary weaver at the end of that process.
Making a zulu basket by Beauty Ngxongo Zulu Baskets But while you might not see too many people carrying baskets like this around nowadays, basket weaving still has its place in a modern setting. America’s Longaberger basket company mass produces maple wood baskets. But instead of solely using a mechanical production line, they use people, molds, and power tools to get the job done!
First, maple wood is cut into long thin strips using an industrial precision cutter. Then, instead of just using the spokes to guide the basket’s shape, the weavers use rotating molds that allow them to quickly weave the basket together. When they reach the top, small pins are hammered in to ensure all the weaves stay in place before the basket’s pried from the mold. With all these modern innovations we take for granted, like machinery and easily-processed materials, mass-production of long-standing inventions has been made possible.
Fishing Techniques
In a time before fishing rods and nets were used on the enormous scale we see today, basket traps were one of the preferred methods for catching a tasty fish for supper. The oldest examples of this kind of basket are thought to be over 9,000 years old, but without any bait or tackle, how did traps like this work?
It all comes down to using the fish’s natural environment against them! So, catching a fish in a river relies on harnessing the power of the current. For this, one primitive technique utilizes a woven basket trap, which is built from sturdy, yet pliable, vines and branches. Using a series of spoke, like the baskets before, vines are woven tightly across the spokes down to a very narrow point. But a second, even narrower funnel is built into the inside. So, when a fish swims through the first funnel and into the basket, it can’t swim back out through the incredibly tiny entrance it came in through!
Primitive fish basket by Mickey Wilson Bushcraft and Survival Finally, the trap is set, with the added advantage of the current being too strong for fish caught in the baskets to swim back out again! After waiting several hours, or days if business is slow, you’ll have a catch of small fry that are ready to swim right into your belly! Of course, our modern methods of trawling the oceans in boats with huge nets amasses much better returns in a much shorter time. But that would be too easy, right?
Filtering Water
In a survival situation, getting clean water from a nearby stream or lake isn’t as simple as it sounds. Untreated water holds a lot of harmful contaminants like bacteria, viruses, parasites and even feces from the creatures that live in and around it! To deal with this, simple water purification systems were developed as far back as 4,000 years ago. One of those primitive methods looked like the one shown in the clip below.
Primitive Technology Create the water filter using bamboo by Primitive Livelihood It’s a type of hanging bamboo water tank that uses layers of rock and sediment to strain out the dirty water in stages! After stripping the bamboo to make it easier to work with, the interior is hollowed out to provide a large tube that’s naturally sealed off at the end. After poking a small draining hole at the bottom, the different layers of sediment are poured in! You might be wondering why all these dirty looking layers are being used, but each of them plays a very important role in the purification system! The charcoal binds harmful pollutants to its surface, while different layers of pebbles, sand, and large rocks are also added to catch larger debris as the water filters through. This self-contained purification device is then hung upright on a tripod before dirty water is poured in. The water gradually works through the layers, dripping out at the end to provide some seriously satisfying, and safe, hydration! Needless to say, this approach is pretty different from how we get clean water in modern society. Huge treatment facilities are usually responsible for public drinking water sources in most modern nations.
In the first stage, chemicals are added to the supply which bind particles of dissolved dirt together. This is called coagulation, and as the increasingly-large dirt particles get heavier, they sink down and are removed. Once this sedimentation process is complete, the water is purified further by being filtered through screens of sand, gravel, and charcoal. Similar to the primitive technique, but way more controlled and on a much larger scale.
With all the viruses, bacteria and germs cleared out, a final disinfectant such as chlorine is added to kill anything nasty that remains. Then, most of the chlorine is removed, and the water finds its way to your faucet with a smoothness that would leave a primal human slack-jawed and wide-eyed.
Primal Knives
In 1991, a frozen mummy named Ötzi, who had been preserved in ice for 5,300 years, was found in the Ötztal Alps. With him was found his trusty knife and other equipment, which revealed a great deal about primal tools.
Ötzi had fashioned the blade of his knife from flint, which shatters into thin, sharp fragments when struck. With his flint-piece chosen, Ötzi used a sturdy wooden tool known as a retoucheur, fashioned from a stripped lime tree branch, to shape and sharpen the blade into a narrowed point. The blade was then set into an ash wood handle and bound together with a pretty grizzly material, animal sinew! The tendons this sinew comes from usually attach muscle to bone, making them a remarkably strong natural fiber. With his knife strongly bound together, Ötzi likely used it as a reliable, indispensable tool for hunting animals and defending himself.
Nowadays, revolutionary advances mean we rarely use stone blades and animal tendons to help us cut up our dinner! The discovery of resilient metals like steel has replaced the need for splitting stones into fragments with the hot forging of metals to make knives.
In this process, a knife is usually made from one single piece of steel. The craftsman puts the steel into a furnace until it reaches red-hot temperatures of up to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit. As it heats up, the steel becomes malleable, and the blacksmith can strike it to change its shape, beating it into a long, flat point. Once it cools, the leading edge is sanded down to a sharp blade, and a handle can be fixed to the end.
Primitive Plucking
Feathers are a made up of 90% keratin, the same stuff that your hair is made from. And like human hair, the reason we don’t eat keratin isn’t just because it’s gross; it’s because we can’t digest it! When it comes to removing feathers from chickens, many primitive techniques simply involved tearing out the feathers one handful at a time.
But one clever method, known as scalding, makes things slightly easier. The technique involves submerging the bird in a pot of 145-degree water for just over half a minute. This loosens the feather follicles, making it much easier to pull the feathers out! Experts can pluck a scalded chicken in mere minutes, but if you’re not very experienced, one chicken could take more than half an hour to pluck!
How to pluck a chicken by Hand...in 2 MINUTES by The Apprentice Farmer Nowadays, around 65 billion chickens around the world are consumed every single year. Even if experienced people were to pluck them by hand using primitive methods, that many chickens would still take a team of 100,000 people over 900 days of constant labor! So how are all the world’s chickens de-feathered so fast? In automated poultry production lines, up to 12,000 chickens can be de-feathered per hour! Sticking to some aspects of the primitive techniques, they’re strapped in and given a very hot bath to loosen the feathers before entering a machine called a plucker. This machine contains hundreds of little rubber fingers that rotate around the chickens and remove the feathers.
A similar method used in homemade "whiz bang" machines shows how effective the process is. The chicken tumbles around the rubber finger-lined drum, and the feathers are pulled away quickly without bruising the meat. In this particular case, it took less than 18 seconds!
Whizbang Chicken Plucker by RiverOakRanch Ploughing
Around 12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers started domesticating animals and cultivating plants; something that sparked the emergence of civilization as we know it. And though it may not be the first thing that comes to mind when reflecting on human technology, the humble plough was integral to humanity’s growth. Ploughs create open furrows in the soil, preparing it for seeding or planting, and churn up essential nutrients in the soil for crops. The easier the land can be ploughed, the more food can be grown.
Primitive ploughs relied on animals pulling the plough through the land using a rudimentary wooden harness called a yoke. In a day, an ox could plough through 1 acre of land, while specially bred horses, like beefy Belgian draft horses, could each plough 1¼ acres a day.But in the early 20th century, experimental motor ploughs, or "tractors" as we know them, came along and changed the game completely. Designed to deliver high traction at slow speeds, tractors became the ideal machines to till the land. In one hour, a tractor using a plough with 10 large heads like the one in the clip below can clear an average of 7.5 acres.
John Deere 8850 & Kverneland DA 10 furrow mouldboard plough by Mr Sound-Gard So, a farmer ploughing through a standard 8-hour working day could potentially clear 60 acres of land! That means in just over a week, a tractor can plough the same amount of ground a horse would cover in an entire year!
Primitive Footwear
Depending on how you look at it, walking around barefoot is either a very brave or a very stupid move. At any moment, sharp objects, dangerous bugs, and all kinds of animal poop could be just one squishy footstep away!
But our ancestors didn’t always go running around barefoot. Protective plant fiber sandals could, and still can, be made quickly by hand, and only require a few natural resources.
The process begins by finding some flexible vines, before cutting, measuring, and bending allowing them to bend to the rough shape and size of the wearer’s foot. Next, several central spokes are added, and other vines are weaved around them. This makes a sturdy, flexible base that won’t snap under pressure! One final vine is used to make a top strap that secures the wearer’s foot to the base, and the sandals are finally ready for walking in.
Primitive Technology KH - Make Sandals From Vines by Primitive Technology KH This particular pair of shoes may not necessarily have been the same style as those worn by our forebears, but the technique has its origins as far back as 12,000 years ago. This type of plant-fiber footwear was invaluable for keeping our ancestors’ feet from becoming cracked or cut when carrying heavy loads through the forest.
But weaving a pair of plant-based flip-flops is a lot simpler than making a pair of the modern flip-flops you can buy at clothing stores! Many are made from plastic foam, the main material of which is poured into a series of pre-set molds of a specialist foaming machine. The top set of the molds is then compressed into the bottom, and the mixture is heated to completely galvanize around them under immense pressure. After a short while, the molds are released, and a fully formed set of sandals are born!
eva full slipper making by Sr. Juan And not just one set, because machines like this are able to produce up to 60 sandals per hour. Needless to say, without access to the necessary materials and machinery, not a single step of the process would’ve been possible for our ancestors. But unlike their plant-fiber counterparts, plastic flip-flops come with some troubling implications. 3 billion of the non-biodegradable shoes are produced each year, many of which end up in landfill and waterways, contributing to the pollution of beaches around the world. Fortunately, though, modern developments are coming to the rescue in the form of
biodegradable sandals made from algae! When dried out and processed, the algae, which is extremely easy and environmentally-friendly to grow in necessary quantities, can form a flexible, soft foam. From there, it’s just a matter of cutting it to shape! It seems the future of footwear may lead into a more natural path after all, albeit with the help of some very high-tech processing!
If you were amazed at these primitive techniques, you might want to read about
advanced past tech that we can't replicate today. Thanks for reading!
