Lashing

Lately I've been watching the documentaries of Mark Anstice & Olly Steed living among the primtive peoples of West Papua - the Kombai and the Mek tribes. In most respects these peoples still live as there ancestors did hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. They wear little clothing, chop down trees using stone axes, have essentially no written language, and live as hunter gatherers off of the bounty of the rainforest. One thing I noted is their use of rattan, a climbing type of palm with a long strong stem, to literally lash their world together. The Kombai live in treehouses, 30 to 40 feet up in the canopy, made with uncanny balance and skill, by lashing stone axe hewn limbs with rattan cords. The same fibers haft an ancient axeblade to a wooden handle. The Mek tribe worked as village to lash a new hut and construct a 100-foot long "monkey bridge" across a raging river to join two villages. Today lashing is considered of makeshift or temporary use, but it is among one of the oldest technologies of man. James E. Gordon in, The New Science of Strong Materials, said: "In pure strength, apart from their flexibility, the lashings, sewings, and bindings used by primitive peoples, and by the seamen down to recent times, are more efficient than metal fastenings." (Pictured are spear and adze hafted with rawhide cordage...which do not do justice to the simplicity and efficiency of the Kombai & Mek.)

Hafting

I recognize that I like to create 'how-to' instructional displays. It wasn't long after becoming involved with primitive skills that I wanted to share how ingenious primitive technology was. I love flintknapping, making stone tools-points, blades, drills, etc. The next logical step it to attach them to a handle, or shaft, to make them more functional. The lower picture is some of the materials from my hafting display I use to illustrate how native peoples utilized natures resources to bind tools together...

A notch is made, to seat a point, by drilling a hole thru a wooden foreshaft with a simple stone drill. The remaining wood is split out forming the notch. Pine pitch is then melted on a rock over hot coals and mixed with powered charcoal, or animal dung. This is used to 'glue' the point into the notch. It is then further secured on with sinew, plant cordages, or rawhide cut into strips. Pitch is often placed over the cordage to secure and waterproof it.





(Click for larger picture)

Yucca's in Bloom

The yucca's are in bloom this past week. Their cream-colored flower petals, eaten raw, are a right of summer.
In a couple of months I'll harvest and dry the stalks for friction fire sets. These stalks are unsurpassed for generating a hot coal, with the handdrill or bow/drill, in under 30 seconds.
The fibers in the leaves make a strong cordage. Archaeologist, Carl Elfgrin, taught me to take the leaves hard pointed ends, along with a fibrous section peeled from the leaf, and use it as a 'needle and thread'. At the Beaver Creek Primitive Skills & Knap-In we constructed coiled
baskets with beargrass and yucca.

I found an interesting bit of info in the book: Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River
Region, by Melvin R. Gilmore. In it he said that on the tree-less plains of the Dakotas, Indians
would make hand drills from the narrow, hard-tipped, leaves of the the yucca. The dried leaves would be bound tightly together with sinew to form a slender handdrill which would be spun in a section of the stalk to make fire. Hmmm...another project to add to the list.

Left to Right:
- Bow/drill firemaking set
- A handdrill fireboard and shaft.
- Coiled basket made from beargrass & yucca leaf strips.
- Yucca cordage attached to a bone fishing hook from a deer leg
phallanges.
- Dried yucca stalk.