Homo Sapiens: The Tool-Borrowing Animal
It was recently reported that the fossilized remains of some fellow from right around 2.8 million years ago revealed that he had been a tool-using type of individual, a fact that hadn’t been known before.
The third metacarpal bone, as you and I might have guessed, displayed a styloid process, that being a curved projection at the end of the bone important to a hand that uses tools with both dexterity and precision.
As I say, nothing that you and I wouldn’t have picked up on at a glance.
I think it’s instructive that there is no mention of any tools found nearby.
I take it for granted this because all of this fine person’s buddies had borrowed them away, and never returned them.
They might have come up to him and said, “Bill or Ralph…” wait that’s not quite right, as he was more probably named something current to the times, in the same way that you turn around and notice that there are no girls named Mary Ann or Betty anymore, but an amount equal to the population of a small country is named Madison.
So his name is likely something more current for that era: “Oog, listen, you don’t have an adze do you? I think that’s what it’s called, anyway, a tool similar to an ax with an arched blade at right angles to the handle, used for cutting or shaping large pieces of wood? You don’t have one do you? I’ll bring it right back.”
And then this fellow goes off with the adze.
Well, you know how it is.
There aren’t any bad guys here, but the adze somehow or other gets put down somewhere around the cave or tree-house or grass hut, and the fellow swears to himself he’ll return it the next day, and then the next day there’s a big mastodon festival, and the day after that someone discovers fire, and between one thing and another the adze gets placed in this second fellow’s garage and never does seem to find its way back to its proper owner.
The same is true of the next guy who asks to borrow his stone wheel, and the next one who asks to borrow his bow and arrow, and the next one who asks to borrow one of those big clubs with spikes coming out of it that you always see these caveman types carrying around.
Soon enough the poor fellow doesn’t have a tool to his name, styloid process or not, which is why he never was able to construct this shelter needed there on the plains of the Serengeti, which doesn’t sound like much, but when it is played out over the long run, leaves you being found by archeologists 2.8 million years later with not a lot to show for yourself.
And without any tools at hand.
The only way around this, I would have been happy to tell this fine person, is to never have any tools in the first place.
The poet Robert Frost said that good fences make for good neighbors. I say that having no tools to lend makes for even better.
Neighbors and friends can’t not return the tools I don’t lend them, and the best way I know to not lend them is to not have them in the first place.
There’s a kind of elegance to the scheme.
It just clears the air and sets expectations at a reasonable level when the people to the north, east, south, west, one, two or three houses up, or five or six cul-de-sacs down, or completely on the other side of town, all know that it is no use to come to my place to borrow a tool.
I don’t have it.
Writers are encouraged to paint a word picture, so in conversation I will advise these fine people to imagine an entire garage with peg boards making up all four sides, and on those peg board are a series of artfully placed hooks designed to hold securely any number of tools coming in a range of sizes. These slots or holding spots for tools may be ordered alphabetically, they may be divided into cutting tools, and measuring tools, and power tools and so on, they may be organized in any number of ways. And then I will advise my questioner to think of those peg boards as completely empty.
This gets the point across I think.
We may imagine the conversation between the prospective borrower and the no-tool homeowner.
Borrower: Hi there! I’m Ed from the second cul-de-sac down. Listen, you don’t have a ratcheting wrench calibrated in metric units I could borrow, do you? I’ll bring it right back.
No-Tool Homeowner: Nope.
Borrower: Oh, your ratcheting wrench must be calibrated in inches. Well I can make do I suppose. Do you think you can lend it to me for a project?
No-Tool Homeowner: Nope.
Borrower: Why not?
No-Tool Homeowner: I don’t have one. I don’t even know what it is.
Borrower: How about a quick release ratchet?
No-Tool Homeowner: Nope.
Borrower: A combination square?
No-Tool Homeowner: Nope.
Borrower: A 12-tooth cross saw of 22 inches or so?
No-Tool Homeowner: Nope.
Borrower: A handful of C-clamps and bar clamps?
No-Tool Homeowner: Nope.
Borrower: How about a random orbital sander, with either a hook-and-loop or pressure sensitive backing?
No-Tool Homeowner: Nope.
Borrower: A staple gun, locking pliers, bevel gage, or simple claw hammer?
No-Tool Homeowner: Nope, nope, nope, and nope.
Borrower: A shovel?
No-Tool Homeowner: Nope.
Borrower: A pointed stick?
No-Tool Homeowner: Let me think bout that…nope.
Borrower: You don’t have many tools do you?
No-Tool Homeowner: Not a one.
Borrower: How do you get by?
No-Tool Homeowner: Oh, I just do.
Borrower: Can I ask you why you don’t have any tools?
No-Tool Homeowner: Let me tell you about this fellow I know. Well, I don’t really know him, he’s 2.8 million year old, but his situation left a big impression on me. You know, here was a man, or at least a hominid ape with a bright future as a human being, who gave all his tools away. And do you know what happened to him? Let me tell you how they found him. It’s not a pretty story.
Well, and then the conversation would go on from there.
There’s a lot of things around this house that don’t seem to get fixed, I’ll cede you that, but I do have an intact circle of friends, or at least ones that don’t expect much of me in the repair line.
