Primitive Tools and Materials

“Halaf style female figurines Mesopotamia or Northern Syria 6000-5100 BC Louvre Museum”
is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Looking at the Neolithic Period in the history of mankind on Earth (1), we can see that there were many materials used for tool and weapon manufacture. Flint, of course, may be the first one that comes to mind, as flint artefacts have best survived to the modern day. Translating this over to a fantasy world, however, creates many more options. Here I list out the materials that I think could be useful for Neolithic explorers in a fantasy world, then next time some of the ways these materials could be used within OSR d20 based systems.

I think it’s important to say that primitive does not equate to simple. The ingenuity of our Neolithic ancestors was primarily limited by the amount of effort it was merely to survive. The reason I am most interested in telling stories in this epoch of a fantasy world’s development is seeing how inquisitive players can shape the development of religion, culture and magical understanding.

Stone

There are many different types of stone which would be useful to people at a Neolithic stage of advancement. Flint can be knapped using a harder stone to form very sharp edges. When dulled from use they can be chipped down to form smaller but still sharp tools. Using glue made from pine resin or tar made from burnt tree bark small flakes of flint can be attached to wooden shafts to make composite tools like arrows, or hand scythes for cutting grasses or crops. Bone or antler can also be used as a punch to break off very small flakes, these can also be embedded in wood to make composite tools.

Clay and its uses are an important discovery of the Neolithic period. The ability to form wet clay into complex shapes, or to imprint pictures or letters into its surface and then harden it by baking often marks a transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more sedentary agricultural one. Compared to wooden tools, clay pottery is bulky and fragile, but treated well can last much longer. In a fantasy setting it may also be the first opportunity for permanent writing to allow arcane magic to flourish. Clay tablets of spell formulae could form the very first Magic-User spell books.

Sedimentary rocks like sandstone or limestone could be quarried using harder stone tools and used in constructing buildings or as crude tools for working soil or pounding fruit or grains.

The hard stones used to work flint or sedimentary rock were often jade, basalt, greenstone or granite. The hardness of these igneous rocks meant that they were not easily formed into complex tools. They could be polished by lapping them with abrasive stone and water. Polishing would make the surface more resilient by smoothing off potential fracture points. These polished tools could then be used to work sedimentary rocks or flint or attached to handles to make hammers or axes.

Wood

As with stone, there are many types of wood, and even more uses for them. Perhaps the most important use of wood is as fuel for fire (2). Control of fire allows people to stay warm, ward off predators, cook food, work and play into the hours of darkness and to process various materials using heat and flame. For example, sticks that have been dried and hardened at the edges of a fire are much more resilient to compression and can be used to dig soil as hand ploughs. Also, stones that have been placed within the extreme heat of fires can often be cracked apart more easily for tool making.

Wood is probably the most versatile and easily worked material available to Neolithic people and the mastery of working wood with stone tools is likely to be a highly prized skill set. As mentioned above when discussing the use of stone, wood can be used in many composite tools, often as in handles and shafts.

The mastery of shaping and using wood is likely to have been developed prior to the settling of people at the beginning of the Neolithic period. This is because working wood can be done quickly and the end results are relatively light, both these factors would be favoured by nomadic or semi-nomadic people.

Antler, Bone, and Horn

These three similar materials can be used in a variety of different ways, in most cases they are likely to be collected as by-products of hunting or the slaughter of livestock. Antler is an exception to this as stags shed their antlers each year (3), so, in a fantasy world, similar creatures could plausibly do the same thing. All these organic materials share very good hardness and durability, allowing for very sharp points or resilient gouging tools. Unlike wood, they are not found as long, straight, sections, so they are most easily used as small or composite tools, perhaps combined with wood.

Because of their hardness these materials can also be used in the extraction or working of some types of stone. This means that craftsmen can use the by-products of a core activity instead of having to spend additional time gathering material simply to use in the extraction of other material. It is innovations like this which allow Neolithic people to save more and more time as they advance technologically, contributing to the increase in leisure time or specialisation of members of the population away from activities necessary for survival, thus allowing for more music, art or learning.

Skins, Furs and Hide

In a similar way to Antler, Bone, and Horn; Skins, Furs, and Hide are by-products of the core activities of hunting or the slaughter of livestock. If the core race in your fantasy world does not possess fur of its own, then leather and similar materials would allow clothing to be made which would allow expansion beyond the tropical-type regions such creatures would likely evolve (4). Whilst on Earth the use of skins for writing upon didn’t originate until around the Bronze Age, it could be that this developed instead of or alongside writing upon clay tablets.

This could allow an interesting “what if?” scenario to be played out. On Earth the Middle and Near East was the area which saw the earliest development of schools of learning, with mathematics, literature and complex bureaucracies all being seen here first. This may have been because of the early use of baked clay tablets to record language. If inks and parchment was developed first instead, would more temperate or cold climates have seen the first such civilisations?

Wood may be the primary versatile material for rigid components of tools and utensils, but animal hide provides a very versatile material for flexible components. In addition to clothes and parchment, hide could be used in building temporary or more permanent structures, or in making bags and harnesses for carrying things.

The discovery of substances which could tan hides, like faeces or tannin from trees, could lead to rudimentary chemistry, and is made more possible in non-nomadic communities.

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans
3. https://sussexpast.co.uk/learning/learning-at-lewes-castle/prehistory-what-is-it/antler-pick-neolithic
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hide_materials