5,300-year-old 'bow drill' rewrites story of ancient Egyptian tools

I think archaeology requires a multidisciplinary approach that has only recently begun to emerge. For too long, especially in past centuries, archaeologists focused on history and languages while neglecting engineering, chemistry and the practical techniques that enabled survival and innovation. That's why the general public views our ancestors as 'primitive,' when in reality they possessed techniques many of which we've lost or still don't fully understand.

Indian carpenters always had a drill with large spindle around which a long rope is wound. A person pulls the rope back and forth spinning the drill. Another person holds the drill in position using a flat wood piece at the top with small hole to hold the drill axle.

Same technique is also used for spinning a wooden churner to get butterfat out of curd. A standing woman would pull the rope back and forth for a few minutes on the long churner stick that is churning the curd in a clay pot placed on the floor.

For the curious, Clickspring has recreated something a lot like this and uses it on his Antikythera Mechanism videos on YT.

Bow drills were still commonly used in India in 25 years ago.

Because electricity was unreliable and machinery was expensive.

I wonder if the bow drill principle for boring holes evolved from fire-starting techniques, where the same reciprocal motion was already understood and mastered in that years.

Just speculation, but it suggests how practical problem-solving builds on existing techniques rather than appearing fully formed.

It's what a lot of engineers have been saying for decades: Looking at the surfaces of the artefacts, it's obvious more advanced tooling, than what was claimed by archaeologists, must have been used. Oh irony, the bits were already lying about in the museum's archive for a century.

Conspiracy theorists have long pointed out the obviously drilled holes in stonework that was >5000 years old. Of course they want to attribute it to lost advanced technology, but the more believable answer is that ancient Egyptians had really refined mundane tools like a bow drill.

I still want to know how the scoop marks were made in the ancient quarries. What tool could do that?

Given need, access to anything that might serve as string, pieces of wood, and too much time to think about the problem, most singular humans will come up with that within the year, if not within days.

That thing has probably been independently invented a hundred thousand times over. Trying to figure out who did it first is silly.

Also that is not a "sophisticated" tool at all. It's literally one step above hitting rocks together. Sharp rocks happens to be the only tool you need to make a basic bow drill.

Ohh no, i thought the science is settled on slaves and chisels.

Hominin history is millions of years old. 5300 years is merely a drop in the ocean of human history.

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