Tool Use By Humans
In Oceania and America, shark teeth were commonly used for tools, especially on weapons such as clubs and daggers, but also as blades to carve wood and as tools for food preparation. For example, various weapons edged with shark teeth were used by the Native Hawaiians (see example here), who called them leiomano. Some types were reserved for royalty. The Guaitaca (Weittaka) of coastal Brazil tipped their arrows with shark teeth. The remains of shark tooth-edged weapons, as well as chert replicas of shark teeth, have been found in the Cahokia mounds of the upper Mississippi River valley, more than 1,000 km (620 mi) from the ocean. It is reported that the rongorongo tablets of Easter Island were first shaped and then inscribed using a hafted shark tooth.
Read more about this topic: Shark Tooth
Famous quotes containing the words tool and/or humans:
“One of the great reasons for the popularity of strikes is that they give the suppressed self a sense of power. For once the human tool knows itself a man, able to stand up and speak a word or strike a blow.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior—bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper—it’s possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother’s impending visit.”
—Mary Arrigo (20th century)