42 http://www.rifleshootermagazine.co.ukI
t probably all began with an accident. To be clear, I’m
speculating, but it seems like a sensible hypothesis. At
some point way back in prehistory, around 2.6 million
years ago and long before the dominance of Homo
sapiens, one of our ancestors, a hominid of some
classification, either stepped on or picked up a flake of flint
and it cut them. Instead of grunting and lobbing the offending
article into the undergrowth, that primordial genius saw in
their flesh wound the myriad applications of a revolutionary
new object. In that moment (which was undoubtedly mirrored
by similar events at various times across the globe), the craft
of butchery was born and the way hominids consumed meat
changed forever.
While edged tools may not have been the very first used
by man (the survival of bone, antler and wooden tools in the
archaeological record is limited in comparison with stone)
they have certainly never left our side in the millennia since.
This is because blades are exceedingly useful – they help us
to make big objects into smaller objects. For early man,
hunting was dangerous and likely had a much lower success
rate compared with, say, stumbling across carrion.
It’s probable that much of our meat-eating,
pre-agrarian society was opportunistic. But
hanging around kill sites chewing on ageing
carcasses was risky – there were otheranimals with bigger teeth that also wanted that meat.
However, if you had a handy tool to break down the carcass
into transportable pieces, suddenly you possessed a
supreme advantage over all other beasts.
There is a school of thought among academics which links
the consumption of high-protein foods, such as meat and
fish, with the development of our outsized brains. Edged
tools can only have assisted in this. Have knives made us
smarter? The sharpened edge persisted into the Bronze Age
and lent itself well to being fabricated using metals. During
this period, our devotion to knives grew and they became
significant symbolic artefacts used in spiritual ceremonies
(see the enormous bronze dagger discovered by a Norfolk
farmer while ploughing his fields in 2002). Because the
constituent elements of bronze aren’t deposited as widely as
iron ore, bronze cutting tools were eventually supplanted by
those wrought in iron, which also happened to be a lot
tougher. Eventually, we learned to add carbon to iron and
created something we would recognise today as steel; a
metal alloy that can be hardened to retain an edge for longer
(as opposed to its softer cousin, iron).
The discovery of steel was year zero for the knife as
we know it today. By the time we were reliably
producing steels, we were able to craft incredibly
effective edged tools and weapons. Before theCUTTING-EDGE CRAFT
Philip Siddell reflects on man’s enduring relationship with knives and explains why a
custom-made creation could satisfy more than just our practical needs
PICTURE:PHILIP SIDDELLPhil is
a master knife
maker, specialising in
custom comissions.
http://www.
wellingtonbladeworks.
comBELOW: A custom-
made knife is
about more than
just functionality –
it’s an heirloomFEATURE Knives with Philip Siddell