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To: tekboy who wrote (45616)	8/19/2001 2:01:41 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Hey, those are my ancestors! hf.uio.no No wonder I have hairy arms with chimpoids ancestors like that wandering around with stone spears in the ice-age. Those clovis spears really don't look as though they are made by somebody as smart as Irwin Jacobs with his orthogonal pseudo-random noise Fourier transforms, quantum physics and silicon carbide application specific integrated circuits. Or even me if I could be so immodest [I too can make random noise so I expect a sharpened rock would be within my aptitudes]. Mqurice

To: tekboy who wrote (45616)	8/19/2001 2:41:45 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Well, perhaps not Solutrean, but how about Clovis? The hard thing for most people to understand about flintknapping is that notches and such, things that make the point look complicated, are actually the easy part. These are done with pressure flaking which involves taking off quite small flakes with direct pressure. Even a novice like me can do pressure flaking and take a form which is approximately the right shape and trim it up. Not that there isn't some skill involved in doing it on an edge which is intended to remain sharp, mind you, since it is quite easy to pressure flake an edge into dullness ... which is, of course, desirable in a mounting notch. What is hard is striking off large flakes since these are done with a free swung blow (possibly aided by a static piece in contact with the tool). Not only is it devilishly easy to destroy a piece taking a secondary flake, but getting a really large base flake such as those used for the largest Solutrean points requires a very careful reading of the stone and a fine hand in applying the blow.