Banging Rocks Together

And speaking of banging rocks together, we’ve been doing just that.  Jonathan wanted to make arrowheads, so I showed him the basics of flint knapping as I learned them third-hand a hundred years ago in an anthropology class I took in college.  My parents have a gravel driveway, so there’s a nearly-endless supply of flint, but there weren’t any nodules near the house that were big enough to whack together without hitting your thumb.  A lot.  I spent a lot of time knapping my thumb before getting the bright idea to go to the far end of the driveway, near the road, where the larger rocks seem to congregate.

So there we were, three dusty, barefoot boys and a dusty, apparently mad woman, sitting in the gravel at the edge of the road in the middle of nowhere banging rocks together in 100+ degree heat.  People slowed as they drove by in order to gape at us through their hastily-rolled-up pickup windows.  Could I blame them?  No I could not.

But we got some lovely – meaning razor sharp, if completely amateurish – larger points (Jonathan generously called them “spearheads”) and some tiny little flakes -- which in a burst of excitement we called “arrowheads” -- capable of cutting sticks, one’s shoe, or one’s thumb nearly down to the bone.  Don’t ask how I know.

And in other, but oddly similar news, I thought you might like to know that Benjamin is now probably the only child in America who has undergone surgery using a fossilized shark tooth as the cutting implement.  One of the fossils we found while on vacation was the only thing handy at one point to remove a very large splinter from his finger.  He was fascinated by the whole procedure.  I wondered what child protective services would think. 

Surgery went well and the patient is expected to make a full recovery.