To be completely accurate to the title, he's off by about 4,999 years.

I'm having a hard time believing a hunter of that time period would be in a position to age/dry something for a year.

or have a tin can/glass jar

He probably used the birch jar back in the day, or you know, clay.

I like part 3, where he tries to hunt with this thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlyWaRAuDRM

And the comments...



waterfowlspecialist 3 months ago

When bowhunting you must know the lifestyle of animal, so that's what I call hunting! With a firearm you can knock down deers from your pick up truck = laziness. With primitive hunting you can utilize every part of animal (sinews for new arrows/bows) etc. Bones are also for eating (core) and you can use them for arrowtips and decorative. Yeah, primitive archery honors human species old tradition. I respect you Shawn from my hearth!

That was before frozen TV dinners were invented.

Years ago, I was watching a show about Neanderthals with some other people. The narrator was describing how surprisingly sharp flint instruments could be, noting flint knives could have an edge that tapered down to a single molecule in thickness.

"Bullshit!" one guy barked. "Cavemen didn't know about molecules!"

The can is a mineral that can sometimes be found in the river.

That's "Milwaukee" you're thinking of, you noseless weirdo with such plentiful, plentiful healthy organs.

Where did goatse get the mason jar?

OH That guy.

I'm more curious about where he got the gloves.

We're pretty well on the way to eliminating education, money and careers.

The ancient future and the distant past are both seconds away.

I've decided that, rather than make New Years Resolutions that I promptly blow off, I am instead going to commit to New Years Projects, wherein I learn at least one new cool skill each year. If I'd started doing this 20 years ago I would know how to do 20 cool things by now.

My project for 2014 is to learn how to build fires like my pre-industrial ancestors: fire bow, fire plough, maybe even make a fire piston, and then the subsequent steps to turn an ember into a proper fire. Seeing as Boy Scouts can do this stuff, I don't imagine it will take all year to learn. Simplest case, all I need to do is abduct a Boy Scout and I can have all the fires I want.

For my part, I will be casting iron and a few other transition metals. I mean, any fool can cast silver or copper, even this cave guy. All the real hep cats melt Fe. I'll be using decidedly more modern techniques tho.

try making just birch tar without glass or metal containers, that seems pretty difficult from the one video I've found.

That was my first impression, but consider that this method of extraction is likely just a guess. I would try boiling the bark, that might get hot enough to cause the tar to unbind and float to the surface. Also remember, our caveman was sporting a copper axe ( imagine trying to chop wood with a soft copper blade ) but it's not stretch to imagine copper bowls being available from the same guy he traded with for the axe.

the tar was used up to 80,000 years ago, long before copper smelting.

OK. Let's get our Nessmuk on then (who????).

I dig a deep depression in the dry dirt, and put a wooden or ceramic bowl inside.

I pile up a lot of birch bark in and over the depression.

I take large hot stones from the fire, and pile them around the bark. Big pile.

I cover the whole affair with dirt, and anything else to hold the heat in and keep the air out.

Several hours later, I dig it all up and collect the sweet sweet oil.

You know, I haven't bothered to google any of this yet. Is there a good understanding of the ancient method?

none that I could find.

it's also harder to do than you think (I dunno if boiling in water would even work) since it's a vapor distillation process that takes hours and hours of intense heat.

chamber can crack from the prolonged heat, dirt could contaminate and render the tar useless, etc, etc.

so this guy pretty much skipped one of the most difficult steps by using modern equipment.

(but I don't think he was going for authentic methods, he just wanted the authentic end-product, in which case he could have just mail-ordered everything)

We'll go even more primitive. Stone age style.

I take a birch log. I wet it.

I stick one end in the hot fire. I leave the other end out.

I scrape the tar off the cold end as it bubbles out along with the steam.

Tedious? Yes. But prolly quite doable. I spent a lot of time sitting around fires as a kid, and it was quite instructive.

So very Oregonian! Doubly ironic given that a few short minutes searching in the right areas where he lives will yield all the flint and actual native american formed arrowheads you could ever want.

But I get what he's doing here. Nice.

It's not a real hobby unless something has to die.