Comment by zxexz
13 hours ago
> Others have tried to cook like the Neanderthals, concluding that flint flakes were surprisingly effective for butchering birds, and that roasting the birds damages the bones to such an extent that it's unlikely they would be preserved in the archaeological record.
I found this statement a bit alarming, as flint flakes being quite effective in butchering is quite well known — anyone who has practiced or studied “primitive living” ( that term doesn’t feel right…) would know.
However, that was not an explicit conclusion in the referenced paper, just by arstechnica. Not even a gripe, though, very interesting article!
Flint fractures conchoidally to produce edges as sharp as 30 angstroms - sharper than modern surgical steel which typically reaches only about 300-600 angstroms.
They're probably looking for something more specific than "can make something that works well enough for youtube", like seeing if an exact copy of flint found in a site yields the same leftover marks as found on other bones in the site, or something.
Also, it's one thing to say that with modern techniques and design that flint flakes work for the purpose intended, it's quite another to say flint flakes as they would have been made in the neolithic can be used in specific ways not necessarily by design, and then collect and write up all the findings in an academically rigorous way.
There's plenty of research on things that "everyone knows" which turn out to be not true, so validating these ideas is still worthwhile science.