The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [128]
The toolmaker opened the bundle and spread out the leather hide that held the tools of his trade. He looked at Ayla and decided to give her the benefit of some useful knowledge about stone. He picked up a piece he had discarded the day before. Through long years of trial and error, Droog’s forebears had learned that flint had the right combination of properties to make the best tools.
Ayla watched with rapt attention while he explained. First a stone had to be hard enough to cut, scrape, or split a variety of animal and vegetable materials. Many of the siliceous minerals of the quartz family had the necessary hardness, but flint had another quality that most of them, and many stones made of softer minerals, did not have. Flint was brittle; it would break under pressure or percussion. Ayla jumped back with a start when Droog demonstrated by bashing the flawed stone against another, breaking it in two and exposing material of a different nature in the heart of the shiny dark gray flint.
Droog didn’t quite know how to explain the third quality, though he understood it at the deep gut level that came from working with the stone for so long. The quality that made his craft possible was the way the stone broke, and the homogeneity of flint made the difference.
Most minerals break along plane surfaces parallel to their crystal structure, which means they would only fracture in certain directions, and a flint worker could not shape them for specific uses. When he could find it, Droog sometimes used obsidian, the black glass of volcanic eruptions, even though it was much softer than many minerals. It did not have a well-defined crystal structure, and he could break it easily in any direction, homogeneously.
The crystal structure of flint, though well-defined, was so small it was homogeneous too, the only limitation to shaping it being the skill of the knapper, and that was Droog’s special talent. Yet flint was hard enough to cut through thick hides or tough stringy plants, and brittle enough to break with an edge as sharp as a broken piece of glass. To show her, Droog picked up one of the pieces of the flawed stone and pointed to an edge. She didn’t need to touch it to know how sharp it was; she had used knives equally as sharp many times.
Droog thought of his years of experience that had honed the knowledge passed on to him as he dropped the broken piece and spread the leather hide across his lap. A good knapper’s ability began with selection. It took a practiced eye to distinguish minor color variations in the chalky outer covering that pointed to high-quality, fine-grained flint. It took time to develop a sense that nodules in one location were better, fresher, less subject to inclusions of foreign materials, than stones from a different location. Perhaps someday he’d have a real apprentice who would have his appreciation for those finer details.
Ayla thought he had forgotten her as he set out his implements, carefully examined the stones, then sat quietly holding his amulet with his eyes closed. It surprised her when he began to talk with unspoken gestures.
“The tools I am going to make are very important. Brun has decided we will hunt mammoth. In the fall, after the leaves have turned, we will travel far to the north to find the mammoth. We must be very lucky for the hunt to be successful; the spirits must favor it. The knives I am going to make will be used as weapons and the other tools to make weapons especially for the hunt. Mog-ur will make a powerful charm to bring luck to them, but first the tools must be made. If the making goes well, it will be a good sign.”
Ayla wasn’t sure if Droog was talking to her or just stating the facts so he would have them