It always bugs me how cavemen wheels aren’t ever depicted with a matching axle. That’s the hard and novel part! I’m glad this guy found an alternative for it.
With enough grease any old stick can be an axle for a while, the wheel is the hard part.
At the very least, novel applies. Lots of things roll, but what in nature has an axle? I’d also like to clarify that they probably didn’t use stone in real life, because that would be dumb. I suppose if we’re insisting it’s monolithic stone that’s true just because of the raw time it would take. And oh boy, they better be careful not to crack it.
If you have a proper axle, you have a lathe and turning a solid wheel for a cart shouldn’t be too hard. Failing that, or failing the idea to try turning, it has to be freehand, but plenty of people could do that (more so than today, probably, since every moment we spend in a classroom or office is a moment they would be working with their hands).
If it has to be a wheel that’s strong and light like for a chariot, it gets harder and you’ll need actual wheelwright skills, but just a cart should be able to run an a solid wheel. If you’re going for a chariot you probably want a reasonably well-fit axle as well, although my knowledge of chariot driving is too limited to be super sure.
I would argue axels came first, and the wheel is a derivative. See the likely methods accepted by (non ancient alien) archeologists for paleolithic to bronze age wonders made from stone; they used logs on the ground as rollers, essentially an axel, it wouldn’t take much of a leap to carve out the majority of those logs to lighten the load, creating a fixed wheel axel, which just needs a semipermanent but smooth rolling attach point to a vehicle or tool to be even more useful.
When I say axle (that is the correct spelling for this, according to a quick search, FYI), I mean it has a stationary bearing in which it turns. So what you’re calling a “semipermanent but smooth rolling attached point”. A roller is a completely different simple machine with no sliding surfaces.
I’m pretty good at thinking outside the box and innovating, so I’d probably just die.
Dying, mostly.
Dying
I came here to write Dying, but 7 other people had already done that.
Yeah I typed my comment then scrolled and realized I’m extremely unoriginal:)
Cavemen would have just rolled their eyes when people died back then. Like, pffft, everybody does that.
I’m a natural at shooting a traditional bow.
I know every edible plant in my area, and some that get you high.
I can find north without a compass, day and night.
I can make a fire from things I can gather in the woods.
I know how to safely fell a tree, split logs and build a shelter with hand tools.
I know how to act around most predators and have experience handling a spear.I think I’d do reasonably well.
Sometimes I wish I was born in the stone age. My ADHD is completely gone whenever I’m in the wild.I started reading and was like “okay, sure buddy” then I remembered I have developed a lot of the same skills, including tracking wildlife.
And then I remembered the time I learned to identify clay deposits and to separate out the clay so I could build stuff with it.
So I thought: “wth, this is so weird! Ohh, they have ADHD too… That explains a lot”.
I wasn’t diagnosed at the time, when I was learning to find clay, but that should have been a sign lol
Navigation and being the first to try a cool looking mushroom and findout how dead I get.
why navigation?
I just have a really good sense of direction and memory of places and paths.
Usually if I went somewhere even only once, even a year later I can recall how to get there again
oh that’s decent
*invites you to the caveman inner-circle*
Oh! I’m actually somewhat decent with some useful things. I got sent to a wilderness school for fuck up kids when I was a teen. So I know how to, and have applied a lot of survival stuff.
I know how to effectively make a somewhat permanent shelter. I can make and use a bow drill to make fire, and along the same principal but with much more effort and time I could make fire with hand drill or fire plough techniques. I know how to make basic traps. I can make cordage, and have very, very very basic tracking skills. I know some edible and toxic plants in my area (not exhaustive by any means). I know how to clean and dress game. There’s a lot of other stuff, but those popped into my head immediately.
It’s been a long time since I’ve done all this, but the knowledge and know-how is all there. I’d actually be a decent person to have around!
That’s a pretty excellent school to go to, hell I wish I had that level of training
I think excel would be good software for managing hunter rotations, supplies and stone inventory.
Time travel, evidently.
Is that Marjorie Trailer Greene?
That’s a supermodel compared to her.
Either making elaborate traps and contraptions out of sticks and stones.
Or brain surgery.
You’d be the shaman putting holes into heads to cure headaches
Hey, maybe you’ll be the most successful neolithic brain surgeon and only kill half your patients
It could go either way
Starvation.
Dogs seem to like me so maybe I’d be one of the first to domesticate dogs. I’d probably just live with dogs.
Our ancestors measured time to keep track of the breeding seasons of their prey as to not exterminate the local populations… so most likely for that
Or just to better understand how and where to catch them. Don’t forget we hunted all kinds of things to extinction anyway.
sucking dick
While I believe you, dear nutsack, take a minute and think about the whole process of sucking dick before showers were a thing.
They were just used to it. Even today, bathing frequency is culturally dependent.
When old love poetry talks about the musk of a lover, I do wonder at what range it was noticeable.
you do what you’ve got to do
