Ingenious 8,000-Year-Old Trick to Start a Fire | Ray Mears' BushCraft | BBC Earth Explore
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2024
- Arrows were an essential part of life for the people of Stone Age Britain. However, a straight arrow requires fire to be created, so how did people make fire 8,000-years-ago without using matches or lighters? Survival expert Ray Mears demonstrates an ancient technique that is just as effective today as it was for our ancestors thousands of years ago.
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You're having a bad day when you're patiently clickclkciclickclicking away with your flint/iron pyrites combo and an ant comes along and steals a lump of your tinder!
I love that they show All the striking effort. People like me who barely step foot off pavement, need to see the whole process and not an edited down 30second highlight that makes it seem like 2 strikes should shoot fireworks off a rock is the norm. Realistic expectations!
Glad you found the video inspiring. We've got more Ray Mears on our channel and coming soon, so make sure you're subscribed!
Wish Ray was still on tv I loved everything he ever made
Considering how inefficient the pyrite is at making sparks, I’m surprised that it was even discovered.
Exactly
Came here to say just this. And then find a material to catch it.
@@redrichard9801 Now where did I put my iron forge...
@@redrichard9801 Out of interest, which cultures were producing iron or steel tools back in 6000BC? We'd barely entered the copper age/chalcolithic age back then.
For somebody harping on about "homework", you are standing on some very shaky ground.
Pyrites (from the Greek ‘to light fire’) has been used for probably a lot longer than 8,000 years, Aboriginals in S.A. used it and Australia has been cut off from the most of the world for anything up to 65,000 years.
Pyrites is often found with both gold and coal, two potentially sought after substances, so perhaps finding it was common if they were looking for gold or coal. They would have noticed it’s difference to other rocks and may have seen a spark fly off it when throwing it at a rock or trying to knapp it. A spark to someone so long ago is going to spark some serious attention! (Pardon the terrible pun)
I wonder if pyrites comes in different % of purity, if some samples had more iron would they be easier from which to draw a spark?
I remember being at a scout camp and we found a boulder that would sometimes give off a few sparks when we threw stones at it. You had to do this at night in ordwr to see the sparks but that method might be a good way to discover two different rocks that when struck together would produce sparks
Interesting video Mr. Mears. My wife and I were on photo safari in Tanzania some 20 years ago and had the good fortune to stay with a family of Hadza. While there we made fire and I helped make some arrows with the family patriarch. This was about the first of March, then end of the dry season. It was dusty dry. The hand drill was a piece of unknown green wood, looked like an arrow we made later. The notched base plate was old, dry, Acacia. Tinder a very dusty dry piece of elephant dung. The Hadza gentleman could have smoldering ash in a mater of seconds, I thought I'd worn my hands down to the bone before I got a wisp of smoke. Crack the dung in half, but still attached. Put the smouldering ash in the center and with a very shallow breath, directed off to the side, the dung would ignite in a half minute or so. Watching you tinder take off sparked the memory. Arrows the same as you've shown. Strip the bark, heat and bend with our teeth. Wood unknown. Still have an arrow, the hand drill and notched base. However, once back in Ohio, the fire system only worked for about a week or so. Assumed the humidity was too high for that fire system. Fun video sir. Thanks for reminding me of a great memory. All the best.
Ray Mears is brilliant
I could watch and listen to Ray forever. A legend.
There's nothing stopping you
Go to Mc Donalds and you will find him.
One thing to consider is that this "kit" is probably the equivalent of a modern day lightweight fire starting kit used when you're out hunting/camping so everything is smaller and a bit harder to use.
There's a YT short where someone has a larger rock with some pyrite in it, and a much larger bed of tinder and when he hits the pyrite with a palm sided rock he's making a usable ember every 1-3 strikes. This is the kind of thing you could have back at your community camp.
I don't know about the people of the time and region being described in this video, but I've seen wood and bone objects in museums which made the task easier. One stone mounted onto a handle. The other affixed on a surface. So you could strike them into each other harder, you would only have to hold one of them, you wouldn't have to worry about smashing your knuckles.
I've tried to start a fire using modern flint, steel and tinder. On my first attempt, I wore away about half of the flint with repeated striking before I got a spark to catch in the tinder.
Using flint and steel is an art. And that iron pyrite makes the whole thing a lot harder.
Have to make sure u strike the flint +steel about 1cm from the tinder (ie, right on the tinder). Jam the flint down into the bundle, then use the striker. If the sparks travel 7-8cm through the air before landing, they’ll go out and not work.
LouiseAustralia 🦘
It works quite well with charcloth! I usually make my own for camping and just experimenting with these old techniques.
Ray just has that skill and teaching magic all in one. A true master of his craft.
Ray makes living in any environment like home. So chilled.
Les Hiddins and Ray Mears are true legends...both brought real bushcraft knowledge to the masses.
Yes. This video has taught me to NEVER FORGET THE DAMN MATCHES!
Never heard of Les Hiddins. I'll have to look him up.
@@LastBastian Brilliant Australian survival expert. Had a series in the 80s called Bush Tucker Man that played up here on the CBC. Even though I'm from the Canadian bush, so much of his lore didn't transfer, I still never missed it. Like OP said: legend.
@@RobMacKendrick Looks like some of the old show is on UA-cam. I'm going to check it out.
@@LastBastian It is, in fact. Some of the first videos I ever watched on UA-cam, almost 20 years ago, were old Bush Tucker Man reruns. Enjoy!
I’ve seen similar demonstrations on tv & UA-cam before, and it always leaves me with the same feeling. WOW !🤩 Like magic. Yeah, I would have gone along with him being the leader of the clan, sure.
Ray mears is a bushcraft legend.
Most important....time was all they had. No meetings, no programs to watch and no true deadlines to meet.
Only a stomach to fill... but agriculture made it easier and more predictable.
@@cannabico6621 and a huge thank you to the ones that took the time to figure it out.
That’s true, however, I was on a woodlore course in 1995 and someone asked Ray if he would have liked to have lived then. He said, ‘No. They had no modern medicine, dentistry, no glasses or contact lenses and a much lower life expectancy.’ Meetings might suck, but not as much as leeches, mosquitoes and dying thanks to getting a very small splinter
@@LiveDonkeyDeadLion true but you didn't have "next door neighbors" yet 😁
@@robertwilliams450 of course there were neighbors! Humans have always been social creatures. you'd probably be sleeping in a in a big communal pile in a cave somewhere Croods style!
Excellent. Glad that people can see a demonstration of how challenging this can be.
I think the historical knowledge is more valuable than knowing that fire making is a skill. Which anyone who has tried to make a fire with even modern tools understands.
Now Imagine a caveman that has to do that every day in order to survive, I bet he lights the fire faster than I light my cigarette 😂
IT WAS AT THIS PIONT, 1:40 RAY REALISED HE WAS SAT ON A ANT HILL, TRYING TO START A FIRE 🤣🤣🤣... EXCELLENT VIDEO, STAY SAFE
Miss Ray Mears series. Back in my old backpacking days
thank you so much for showing how not easy and variable fire starting can be !!! *)
In 1981 I spent a year on a mineral exploration programme in the the Arfak Mountains of Papua, Indonesia. On one week long traverse it had been raining most of the day and we needed to make camp. One of the local carriers started looking around for an fallen tree that had been chewed up by beetles. He pulled it apart and inside it was still dry and crumbly. He split another branch in half and laid that flat and used the tip of a small hard stick and vigorously rubbed a small groove in it while another sprinkled the crumbly stuff into the groove and blew gently. After 5 minutes they had the fire going. Didn't need to use a flint or spark at all, just friction and know how.
In the movie ‘Quest for Fire’ there is a scene where a man starts a fire with friction. I remember reading an interview in which Rae Dawn Chong, one of the leads, stated they had to shoot the scene several times as the man started the fire so quickly they didn’t get enough footage. Used his feet to hold the horizontal board steady while holding the vertical piece between his hands and rolled it back and forth between his hands pressing downward firmly as he did so. He would quickly move his hands back to the top of the stick and repeat the motion. With the tinder there at the focal point, it took less than a minute to develop sufficient heat to ignite the tinder.
Of course, you do need that tinder to be dry. If I remember correctly, they were in a covered, dry space.
Interesting, I have seen a video of someone else using the hand rolling method. This guy also held the horizontal piece with his feet but used two hand to firmly grip the rubbing stick as his hands were damp with all the rain (which by then was only light drizzle)@@justmytwocents4529
There are lots of ways to make fire, ofc the friction method is more physically intensive so they would always prefer flint back then if available
ray the best
Thank the lord for matches and Bic lighters. I remember seeing a guy shave ice into a lens and using the sun to create a fire.
Ray Mears, REAL Bushcraft 👍
Ray in his prime, miss those years....👏
People ask, "why do you have waterproof AND hurricane matches?" , but then don't like the answers.
Example: if it's my birthday, it's 42°F, drizzling, and someone gets drunk and falls off the boat, it's supposed to be me.
And when it's not, and you do, I'll yell at you while I'm lighting the fire.
I think instant fire is a taken for granted miracle. Fire goood. 😁🔥
Matches are nice but there's nothing like a solid ferrocerium tube when stuff really gets wet.
I think a good striking stone cost one Walrus Tusk.
Didn't know Doggerland had Walruses. Heh. Let's face it, that's where the action was in stone age Britain. A lush, fertile paradise of megafauna sunk beneath the sea like Atlantis.
Doggerland was a large strip of land that connected England to the mainland about 12,000 years ago.
Did you notice he used the outermost papery bark of a birch tree? It makes great tinder. He also found dry dead grass (not always easy to find, depending on tbe weather), but I wish he would have said which species. Some burns better than others. The twigs he laid on the fire were rather green. I would like to know the reason, as I am sure he has a good one.
Incredible. Would not expect it to be possible to start a fire with ONLY stone tools + fibers and wood. Someone a LONG TIME AGO was really inspired to try it out.
Amazing skills, almost lost to us. Yes, it took a long time but it was not as if he was missing football on the t.v.
The process to start a fire kept being laborious and time consuming for most of human history. This is why people usually kept a permanent low buring fire at home or took fire with them in specially designed containers when travelling. When their fire did go out by accident they would often ask to borrow fire from a neighbor rather than starting a new one. Matches and lighters where both only invented after 1820. Matches were called 'Lucifers' at first and early lighters took inspiration from flintlock pistols.
I saw a fast method using bamboo. People in Asia had a good plant that works well just using friction.
I love Ray Mears - More please!
Looking at this video I must say that stone age man had a lot of patience😀😀😀
It is hard work , but seems peace full at the same time
There is a book called Eric Sloane’s America written around the 1950’s. It’s not about early primitive life, but he does explain in fascinating detail how pioneer type people did the things they did.
That is not easy. Respect.
Necessity is the mother of invention . Skill and diligence it's father .
this is so in-efficient compared to piece of pure quartz hitting other piece of pure quartz, that's mad.
The fastest I ever started a fire using a flint stone was when my lighter stopped working and I just wanted a puff before going on a hike. Dug a small hole, filled with shredded lichen and dead grass, way way more than he was using here so that the sparks had more surface area to catch. Powdered it with dry pitch. Took maybe three minutes of striking, maybe less. Somebody asked me later why I didn't break the lighter and dump the residual fluid on the kindling...
I also have a couple of rocks I've found over the years that almost certainly have spindle marks in them from repeated use sometime in the past. They seem so much more curious than the arrows and spearheads that are easier to identify. I gave my dad an old flint I found with a chipped edge and a square handle all cut out of one tiny rock that fit into the bend of your knuckle. Still razor sharp. Either had a perfect indentation for a thumb (including some interesting patina reminiscent of a thumb print) or was in fact smoothed away by another person's use.
A dead lighter can still start a fire. Carefully and slowly grind the flint with the abrasive wheel and collect the flint dust. Sprinkle the dust on a tablespoon of tinder, then spark the lighter up so the sparks land on the dusted tinder. It will fire up like a party sparkler, so have more tinder ready, usually no blowing required. Takes two minutes of light work.
I often wonder, which grunting hunter came up with the idea to dry a fungus, scrape the shit out of it and then figured out which two stones to bang together to get a spark? How did it all start?
Maybe something as simple as someone using a piece of iron pyrite as a hammer stone to knap a flint tool and noticing the sparks. They likely already knew about the fungus making good tinder. A bit of practice and you can probably get a more consistent spark and direct it better.
When you camp for an extended period of time you'll exhaust the materials around camp pretty quickly making fires, which is why a lot of places make you bring your own firewood. But you especially exhaust your kindling materials. You throw every piece of dry fiber you can find, you crack it, you rub it down because you're constantly compromising from having used the better stuff the last time you started one. When the fire's hot enough you throw you start throwing other random stuff in or picking it apart like a pita and throwing pieces in. I've spent hundreds of nights around a campfire by myself, a couple months straight, and you pass a lot of time watching stuff burn. They would have had tens of thousands of nights around the fire.
The Greek god Prometheus stole fire from Olympus and gave it to mankind.
I use Jasper, it's a little brittle, but it sparks great.
Ray is my survivalist of choice.
The desire to eat is a strong motivator!!
The time when they most needed a fire would've been when it has hardest to light one, cold & wet, looks hard work.
This method would never have been discovered by me.
"It takes perseverance..." or a match, or a mini blow torch =P
I use lint from the clothes dryer as tinder - works great
Taking the clothes dryer camping is now standard in the 21st century
I haven't done this myself, but there's an easy way where you hold the tinder with your thumb or finger on the bottom of the rock just sticking out a bit, that way it more easily catches the spark
My favorite stone age fire starting technique is to wait for a lightning strike and resulting wildfire, steal some, and then carry it around in a clay bowl with plenty of both dry and damp tinder and twigs
I remember when my uncle Ray invented that fire starting technique.
One can clearly see this was filmed at the Riyal British Anthropology Proving Grounds. This is where generations of anthropologists learned the secret of our ancestors...
Just finding Pyrite is challenging let alone making a spark with it.. it’s much easier to just stand on a mountaintop during an electrical storm.. zap.. fire!
I don't think we should use Ray's commendable efforts with pyrite as any more indicative of its effectiveness than a neolithic man's performance with a smart-watch.
Guess that means, I need to find some pyrite. That smart watch, has been in the sock drawer, for over a year.
Ray is the king of survival
Very Impressive, indeed. Well done, cheers...
Do that while wet snow has been falling for six hours with a 20 gusting to 30 mph wind.....
Living legend
Makes me really appreciate modern tools. Even the bow drill seems like cheating compared to this.
I'd rather have a flammable medium like this fungi or some pitch than I would a bow drill. Those things are so much work.
@@danlowe True, but my comment wasn't about the tinder.
impressive!
If you want to practice fire starting at home dryer lint is a perfect substitute for natural material.
You're absolutely right. Better yet, take used toilet paper rolls, stuff them full of drier lint and wood shavings, and vacuum pack them with a book of matches. It's water proof and burns like crazy.
1:39 ... striking the flame took so long that a little creature tried to opportunistically steal your kindling.
It was only one way but there are many areas where this fungus was not available.
Carry it with you, the stones aren't always available either!
I'm sure all good supermarkets stock it
You can find similarly flammable chemicals in lichen. Tree oils are fairly prevalent especially if they dry into a pitch. The main thing is that this shreds into a nice cottony fiber. You can also shred other materials to have this kind of surface area, which is often more important for combustion that the medium itself. Try stuffing a shirt with some thistle seeds. It makes a great pillow and the next morning you can use it as an extremely flammable kindling.
Thumbs up for using the dactyl "higgledy-piggeldy".
I have a Swedish fire iron which makes copious sparks, but I still haven’t managed to get any tinder to ignite.
So nice to be outdoors
It is truly a miracle that any humans made it through this time and had kids.
I believe this why we are so dam mean and ornery! The dedicated ones won the game.
Ah.... I just need to stock up on some horse hoof fungus. Got it.
Our collective impatience even watching the host attempt this - created by the instant gratification of our technology- is why too many people believe “aliens must’ve given us that.”
An alien hand reaches into the shot with a lighter and click - the caveman's fungus ignites. _2001: A Space Odyssey theme_ ...
i always wanted to try this and i have a little kit that my brother gave me years ago that contains flint and steel and some kind of tinder. did you ever see the 1980's movie "quest for fire"?
Very impressive woodscraft.
Thank goodness, we discovered matches
Considering the description of this method in the "Earth's Children" series by Jean Auel, I believe she glossed over her description of making fire with iron pyrites and flint.
Chert red stone like red palladium hitting a basalt quarts rock could render a spark. My father was a geologists he told me about this trick.
Basalt is renowned for not having any quartz in it at all.
@@SimplyReg Basalt has low silica content for an igneous rock but its still around 50%
@@CAMSLAYER13 I meant recognisable quartz phenocrysts. Also, I never heard of red palladium, so I looked it up. It's a type of footwear.
People here in the comments call it long and challenging, but this is by far the fastest method I have ever seen. Remember, that modern day humans who got shipwrecked on a remote island usually took months to produce a fire, if they ever managed at all.
It can take a while, and without someone first showing how it works, it would be easy to think you are just doing it wrong and give up. You also need the right kind of woods. Bamboo works very well.
Met ray last year on his UK tour ...may have been year before covid messed up my time line , was a bucket list thing for me , sad to see how many times on you tube his work has been stolen.
"THE FINEST KIND"
Nightmare lighting that fire
Have to be a very dry day for making sparks at that slow rate. Someone finally got angry and came up with a better way
Now just imagine doing this in the wind and rain while your wife and children complain about being cold and you'll REALLY understand how important better methods were. lol
granite gives sparks more generously in my experience
i've never tried this technique. but dry milkweed pods go up in flames with very little effort. if there isn't milkweed in Britain, there should be some plant with similar properties.
The plant called cattails in North America has wonderful fluff if you break up its seed heads. I believe you have this plant in thr UK, but I don't remember what you call it. It's a Typha species. All round good plant. You can eat its shoots in the spring, its roots in the fall and its pollen in summer. In winter you get that excellent tinder. I think you can make baskets from the leaves, too.
Tondelzwam zat vroeger in de vorm van een klein smeulend vuurtje in een beschermend kastje, de tondeldoos. Je hoefde alleen even te blazen en je had VUUR. Magisch.
Great work. thanks
Nice! Man I'm glad for flint and steel! And fat lighter!
Bear grills Vs ray mears on Two islands. Who would survive.
Ray of course.....
Very impressive.
3:25 what about the holed antlers for straightening and normalizing the arrowshafts?
Nice short demonstration.
How do i identify these rocks and where do i find this fungus.
I didnt learn anything:(
Nice.
Amazing. Also, get out the way, ant, or you'll be turned into crisp
How would a fire bow fit into your timeline?
I remember when Ray came here 🇳🇿 & made a fire 🔥by rubbing 2 sticks together then we went bush, Ray built a bivoac 🏕️from surroundings
Works in the correct climate ,not in som tropical climates . Quarts also works as does dark brown sandstone that contains alot of iron and silicone . The correct tender is highly important .
Amazing technology ❤ even if 8000 y old
Very interesting
Wow.
By the time the ancients got it to light, someone had invented the Disposable lighter.