The Mender

Flint-knapping

Esri woke up, out of breath with her alarm blaring, and Jilly yelling, "Turn it off, turn if off!"

Esri slammed her hand on the alarm, shutting it off. She now dreamt about the cave-people every night. Often little happened in the dreams - just normal food gathering, talking and singing. But if something intense occurred like running to grab spears, she had a hard time coming out of the dream at the right time and needed the alarm to wake her up. Unfortunately, it meant that Jilly also got jolted awake.

Jilly came over to Esri and stood with her hands on her hips. "Do you have to make the radio so loud? And what's wrong with you? Why are you going huff, huff?"

"The alarm startled me. Shook me awake. I'm ok," said Esri.

Joe poked his head in, "You got everything under control? I need to get going."

"Yeah, we're fine, Dad. You go ahead."

Joe came in and gave each girl a hug and a kiss. "See you later 'gators." And he was gone.

"C'mon, Jills, let's get going. I want to get to school early today. I've got a big presentation in Mr. Romero's class, and I want to have time to review my notes at school."

This week they were doing their Royal Ontario Museum project presentations. Esri's was scheduled for today. Her presentation was about the Huti stone and the other stone tools with it in the display case.

The sign on the display said the stone tools dated from the Middle Stone Age and were found on terraces above the Blue Nile. One of the volunteers at the museum explained to her that the Middle Stone Age covered the time period from about 300,000 years ago until about 30,000 years ago, and that the tools were used by homo sapiens who, by that point in time, were not that different from us today - except with way less technology.

Esri read about how archeologists believe the stones were used and she found a survivalist group in Toronto who does flint-knapping – striking hand axes on pieces of obsidian to create arrowheads and spearheads. She e-mailed them and one of the members, Hank, invited her to come over and watch him.

One evening, Joe took Esri and Jilly to visit Hank. He showed Esri how to strike the obsidian and make a basic arrowhead. He sat her down with protective gear - goggles, and a leather pad for her lap, and let her try her hand at it. As soon as Esri grasped the stones, she knew exactly what to do to shape a perfect point. She tried to pretend to be awkward about striking the stones but it was as familiar as tying her shoe.

"Well, aren't you sumthin'," Hank said. "I've been doing this for years and you just made a better point than I ever could. Hard to believe you've never done this before, Esri."

"Ah, I'm kind of a good mimic. I probably just had a few lucky strikes." Esri sensed that Hank felt something else was at play but he didn't press her any further. She was glad that Jilly and her dad were distracted exploring the odd and interesting tools and objects scattered around Hank's basement workshop.

For her class presentation, Esri gave a detailed description of the artifacts in the case and their likely use. She talked about her visit to the flint-knapper and showed the class the point she made with him, describing the process.

Esri reviewed what she gleaned from her research. Since experts can only speculate about what Stone Age lives were like and sometimes they disagree, Esri drew freely from her dream experiences, careful to couch her words with expressions like, "some paleoanthropologists believe that. . ." or "a few experts have suggested. . ."

She only slipped-up once when she said, "Kai likes using smaller hammerstones." Ooopsy. "I mean I liked using the smaller hammerstones, I mean hand axes, from when I tried it with Hank, the flint-knapper." Not a bad recovery, she thought, though she saw Ada and Luka exchange quizzical looks.