If I remember correctly, it showed up in Sapiens. One suspicion is that a bunch of tribes used it as their periodic meeting ground, and that it led to the invention of agriculture in the region because of the frequent human visitation.
This seems plausible to me, especially if it’s constructed bit by bit over many years. (How they would do the quarrying in the first place seems weirdest in my model.)
I think it’s just a simple case of “Flint hard, limestone soft, scratch the limestone with the flint point, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat...”
I wonder at which point the stone-cutting tools stopped being stone themselves.. Bronze is probably too soft and even early iron might have been too soft and too expensive to use for stone-cutting.
If I remember correctly, it showed up in Sapiens. One suspicion is that a bunch of tribes used it as their periodic meeting ground, and that it led to the invention of agriculture in the region because of the frequent human visitation.
This seems plausible to me, especially if it’s constructed bit by bit over many years. (How they would do the quarrying in the first place seems weirdest in my model.)
I think it’s just a simple case of “Flint hard, limestone soft, scratch the limestone with the flint point, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat...”
I wonder at which point the stone-cutting tools stopped being stone themselves.. Bronze is probably too soft and even early iron might have been too soft and too expensive to use for stone-cutting.