SciShow Tangents - Tools

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

Humans use tools to do work! It’s what separates us from the animals! Except for crows… and honeybees… and dolphins… octopuses… well, regardless, tools are great and so is this episode!Head to the link below to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! https://www.patreon.com/SciShowTangentsA big thank you to Patreon subscriber Eclectic Bunny for helping to make the show possible!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreenIf you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:Chatelaineshttps://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-killer-mobile-device-for-victorian-women/https://toolbelts.com/tool-belt-history/https://www.swissarmy.com/us/en/History/cms/historyNew Caledonian crowshttps://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-12/uosa-cck120417.phphttps://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2015.0278https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-12/uosa-cck120417.php[Ask the Science Couch]Oldest stone toolshttps://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32804177https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14464https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/04/world-s-oldest-stone-tools-discovered-kenyahttps://anthromuseum.missouri.edu/exhibit/oldowan-and-acheulean-stone-tools

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase. I am your host, Hank Green, and I'm joined as always by science expert, Sari Reilly. Hello. I'm ready to be an expert on whatever this week's topic is. We'll find out soon enough. And also I'm joined by our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Hello. You guys, do you know what year Taco John's was founded? Oh man, I have read the entire history of Taco John's on their website a number of times. Wow. Their mascot used to be a little devil, which I think is very cute.

He was the same mascot they have now, except instead of a guy with a sombrero, it was a devil. And was he named John? Yeah, they just gave him a different costume. But anyway, 1969. That is very weird. Is that correct? Yes. I told you I knew.

Oh my gosh. That's so strange. That's not how I expected that part of the conversation to go. Every man Sam Schultz knows Taco John's. I love Taco John's. Okay, well, for people who don't know, it's a regional taco fast food place, which is disgusting and delicious at the same time. It's so, yeah, it's so good.

It's like if a pill was very big and full of wet. Yeah. Neat, wet, neat. I've never had it. And I feel like my desire to is going down after this conversation. You got to go one time. No, it's a great, great place. It's the first. Sari, is there any really wet food that you like? after this conversation. You gotta go one time. No, it's a great, great place.

Sari, is there any really wet food that you like? Are fruits wet? I think that, yeah. Yeah, kinda. Fruits are very, not all of them. Like sugary wet. Bananas are weirdly not wet. Like bananas are somehow dry despite being made almost entirely of water.

You're right. And I do like bananas less than other fruits. But like watermelon type ones or berries like the watery ones good in my mouth. Dry fruit

less good in my mouth. Nature's gushers. As I get older and more types of apples are released, you know, like every year there'll be like a hot new apple.

Yeah, a hot new apple. At this point I'm old enough that me and all my friends get really excited about like Cosmic Crisps. Those are the hot new apples. So freaking good. I had somebody who recently, who like before Cosmic Crisps came out, they were like, I've heard Cosmic Crisps are coming to Missoula. Apparently they were like a Pacific Northwest thing first.

And then I moved to Montana. I can't get the Cosmic Crisps. And I'm like, wow. I mean, it's a good name for an apple. It's a hell of an apple. Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science facts.

Our panelists are playing for glory, but they're also playing for Hank Bucks, which we will be awarding as we play. And at the end of the episode, one of them, our resident everyman or our science expert will be crowned the winner. Now, as always, we introduced this week's topic with the traditional science poem. This week, it's from me.

There's only so much I can do with this meat that I am made of. I need something my muscles can be in aid of. Something that makes me more powerful than a physically fit, muscly caveman. Well, I can. I can do almost anything, really. Though I think you will find what I mean is, ideally, that I have a thing that helps me do that. A hammer for nails, or a baseball bat,

or a rock at 250 feet high, or a light bulb that I can spend time reading by. For a human is nothing, just a silly small fool, until you give them a tool. Oh, I really liked that one. Maybe one of my favorite science poems ever. Really? Yeah, I don't know. Something about it. It meandered very beautifully. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Thanks, you guys. It took me a long time. No. Our topic for the day is tools, which is really like, what isn't a tool? So here's my Taco John's iced tea cup, which says since 1969 right on it.

The cup is a tool. The straw is a tool. The lid is a tool. Is the ice a tool? The tea is not a tool. But everything else is a tool. I think the ice could be. Well, we'll see what Sari says.

I'd say the ice could be a tool. I think, yeah, I think depending on your perspective, it is, it is a tool that you use to cool down the drink. And then when you eat it, if you crunch the ice afterward, then it's just food. But while it is cooling down your drink and only performing that purpose, it is a tool that is cooling your tea. Is a toy a tool? Like a ball? Yeah, it's just providing you joy. I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe a tool? Like a ball? Yeah, it's just providing you joy. That's the, I don't know.

Maybe not. Maybe a tool has to do work. I think, yeah, I think there's a difference between work and play, like philosophically, but also when it comes to defining a tool. Okay. Because the definition for tool that I found is a handheld device that aids in accomplishing a task, which seems too narrow. And then you can go broader and say like, like a search engine is a tool. So something used in performing an operation and that's everything.

And I've never held a search engine. Yeah. Nor has anyone. You can like hug a server maybe, but you can't hold it in your hands. If I wanted to pick up Google, where would I go? I bet they have a clever answer for it at one of the offices in like silicon valley you could go there and be like could i pick up google i'm hank green tiktok man and i want to touch google and they'd be like another one and then they'll bring you down to a server room and be like you can hold up this one little modem and technically by holding

this cable or whatever you're holding google i want to lick it can i lick google so it's like a dump truck not a tool too big no yeah all these all the yeah it's it's it's ludicrous to me to think that it would you would have to stick with handheld i understand that there is a certain kind of tool that is handheld but like what do we call the things that do work that aren't handheld then? Just equipment? Devices. Yeah. I think tool in its most basic form, when we first invented the word tool, it was like,

I grab something with my hand and I'm using not my arm to perform a task. I'm using this thing that I'm holding instead. But as we've created more technologies, the word tool has also grown and ballooned and become fuzzy around the edges to encompass things like dump trucks. But if you're using it for fun, then it's not a tool. That is the only thing I'm interested in using a dump truck for. If you're just dumping around dirt to prank your friends, not a tool. Have some dirt, Sam. I brought you a truck of dirt.

Good luck. Bye. Smash my house. Well, Sari, do you then know where the word tool comes from? It's another one of those that just existed for a while. It's another one of those that just existed for a while. It comes from the Old English towain, which means prepare. But it's like various versions of something that sounds like tool, like Old Norse toll or ta or like variations on that.

That's like an instrument that prepares. But I did look up because we got a lot of tweet questions. Very unscientific. But they wanted to know etymology about when and why tool started to be used as like an insult. Like you're a tool. I feel like I can guess why, but it's rude. Oh, do you want to guess why? Is it because of the penis?

Wow. Good job, both of you. I guess I don't have a penis so i would not immediately i like i was like oh that makes sense but but yeah uh they so the first written usage of tool as penis is from uh like the 15 50s or 60s wow i thought i thought it was going to be like 15, like 1915. No, no, no. 1500. Seems like something Shakespeare would come up with.

Thomas Beacon? Relics of Rome. It was like a religious text and they used tool as penis. Wow. And then. Thine tool. In 1663 or the 1660s-ish,

Samuel Butler wrote a mock heroic narrative poem called Houdibras? Huberdas? I think Huberdas. And then co-opted the word to mean a rude person. Probably from, he read it and he was like, oh, I know how to satirize this religious text. I'm going to use the word penis to call another person a dick. Yeah, I mean, it also makes sense just to call someone a tool because it's like you are an object that is used by others, you know? Yeah. You have no agency of your own, but people aren't clever enough for that we just want to call each other penis yes you you have narrowed in on like nerd insult versus literally everyone else we are of a type of people that'd be like oh yeah look at the layers and the insult of tool you're not in control of your You're just something other people use for work and not your own self.

And everyone else is just like, this is a dick. It's a dick. Penis. And now that we know about all of that, and thank goodness that we do, because what was our life before that? It's time for our quiz of the show this week. It's a true or a fake. The history of tattoos goes back a very long time. The history of tattoos goes back a very long time.

Archaeologists have uncovered tattooed Egyptian mummies that date back to around 2000 BC. Also, they found tools dating from back to 3000 BCE that could be used to make those tattoos, which consisted of a sharp point and a wooden handle. And many cultures have different tools to get ink under the skin and create tattoos. Well, in 1891, a tattoo artist, Samuel O'Reilly, patented the electric tattoo machine, which used an electric motor to power an ink-loaded needle going in and out of the skin. You've seen it.

But like many inventions, O'Reilly didn't just invent this machine out of nowhere. The following are three stories of invention inspiration, but only one of them is true. Which one is it? Fact number one, the tattoo machine was inspired by a handheld copier. The user used the device to trace over documents, and as they did so, the motor in the device moved a needle up and down, creating a stencil that could be used to make copies. Fact number two. The tattoo machine was inspired by a handheld sewing machine for shoes. The machine was designed to help the user attach elastic goring, the stretchy bits that

make boots fit easier over your calves and make a more durable set of stitches. Or fact number three. The tattoo machine was inspired by a handheld telegraph designed for battle. The machine used a motor that moved to silence in accordance with a code that was sent through portable wires and recorded on paper. While transmission was slow, the ease of transport and use allowed for portable communication, which was very important on the battlefield. So was O'Reilly's tattoo machine inspired by a handheld copier, a handheld sewing machine, or a handheld telegraph?

Only one of those reads is even remotely possible to me. What do you mean? I guess I don't know how, like, I don't know how a telegraph works, I guess, very well. Does it have a big cord in it? Oh, yeah. You gotta have a big cord. You can't just broadcast noises over radio. We didn't have that yet. It had to go over a wire.

That just doesn't seem particularly likely to me. And then a handheld copier. I don't even know. What year was that from? Did you say? I did not say. Okay. Olden times. I guess I just can't picture that one. It was before 1891 which is when the patent for the electric tattoo machine happened.

So I feel like you know. You're being quiet. No, I don't know. I'm curious about your logic because I usually go first. I also don't. Once you get into the realm of electricity, my brain just goes, no, thank you, and then stops comprehending. And I've tried so hard to train it out of that. But I also cannot comprehend how, like, a telegraph would translate to a tattoo machine

and, like, poking you. Didn't even think about that. I guess, like, the tapping action. But it feels like they're two wildly divergent things. But it feels like they're two wildly divergent things. But I think that, to me, the copy machine or the shoe one both seem reasonable because those both involve poking. So it's like if you're creating a stencil and if it's like presumably you're like tracing something out and cutting holes in something to make a stencil. And that's similar action to putting ink in your skin and so is like making stitches, but smaller.

And you just don't have a thread. You just like poke it. Yeah. That is my logic of like the tapping things. The first two seem to make more sense than the third tapping thing. Oh, but the second one literally has a needle involved. Too easy maybe. Yeah.

But I also get the impression the world was full of shoe factories like around that time. It does. It is weird. Like I do get the feeling of like 1890s everything was a shoe factory. I don't know. It seems like it just like takes up a lot of space in the narrative. A lot of sewing going on of various types.

If someone's saying gotta go off to my factory job then it's always a shoe factory. Yeah, pretty much. I think I have to go with number two with the hand-out sewing machine. My gut's just telling me that that's the right one. Okay. I just can't picture the copier one at all. I can't picture it well enough, I guess.

I was going to go with that one too, but then you said maybe it's too obvious. And so I'm going to, you may have fooled me out of it if it's too obvious. I'm going to go with the copier because I can't visualize it. And so maybe it just looks like a tattoo machine. If I were to look it up, then I'll look at it and be like, oh, yes, obviously. Well, Sari, you are correct. Sorry, Sam. You convinced Sari of the right answer and then abandoned yourself.

So this handheld copier was called the electric pen. It was invented in 1875. And the pen was meant to help merchants and lawyers and really anybody who worked in a field that required a lot of copiers. While the pen did sell well,

one of the challenges was its reliance on batteries, which were not a common thing. And yeah, you can see a picture of it at our Patreon or you can just search for electric pen at the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences thing. And yeah, you can see a picture of it at our Patreon, or you can just search for Electric Pen at the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences and see this thing that lets you poke a bunch of

holes in paper. And then you could, I guess, do something with ink over that paper and then make a bunch of copies of the thing. I think it's how it worked. But now we have Xerox machines, so we don't have to care about that though in all honesty i have no idea how a xerox machine works there was a battlefield uh telegraph it was called the beardsley telegraph and it was used during the civil war by the union and it was portable though not handheld it was big enough that it had to be rolled around i think and it the big the big advantage is that it didn't require electricity. I think you may have had to crank it, though, because it had magnets.

And you'd crank it, and then you'd be able to send a noise down the wire. Okay. There was a wire. Yeah, there was a wire. Right. And as far as the sewing machine, this is false, but it was inspired by Helen A. Blanchard, an American inventor who received 28 patents for inventions, most of which were related to improving sewing techniques and sewing tools. It was based on her patent for an improved technique for attaching elastic goring to shoes.

But she's particularly known for inventing the zigzag stitch sewing machine. So if you ever use a zigzag stitch sewing machine, that was Helen Blanchard to thank for that one. Now that I know very much about stitching, it does seem like it would be based on a sewing machine that's that was helen blanchard to thank for that one now that i know very much about stitching it does seem like it would be based on a sewing machine though but instead it was based on this very weird uh paper poking machine and he was like well instead if i just put some ink on that and put it onto my skin yeah i was wondering if he put it on his arm and went ow wait i have an idea yeah we could do this this whole tattoo thing much faster do you have a tattoo Hank?

I don't but it's I think that coming out of this pandemic I need like seven what do you guys want to do? what's your tattoo on the way? what's your post pandemic tattoo?

I don't think I'll ever get a tattoo probably I'm too indecisive to get a tattoo I already had one booked before the pandemic happened I was going to go to LA in May 2020 and get a tattoo and then everything shut down. And so now I have a half booked

appointment that I have to fulfill at some point. Excellent. It's time for a quick break and then we will come back to the game and it will be time for the fact off. Wow. All right, everybody, welcome back. Our panelists, our resident everyman and our science expert have brought some science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. After they have presented their facts, I will judge them and I will award Hank Bucks any way I see fit. And to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question.

The earliest hammer-like tools didn't have handles, making accuracy hard to achieve and accidents more frequent. So roughly what year in BCE do we start seeing evidence of hammers that have this newfangled feature, the handle? Oh, these are freaking hard. Well, I gave you a hint. It was before zero. Okay.

Yeah. There was a lot of time before zero. Yeah. It's true. There were like millions of time before zero. Yeah. It's true. There were like millions of years before zero. Way more time before zero than after zero. Very true. Do you want me to go first?

Yeah. I'm going to say 10,000 BCE. That's just a number that came to me. I don't even know what that means. So I'm going to go one year earlier than that. One, I mean, one, one, what are they called? Years? No.

Century. One century earlier. So, Sarah, you said 10,000 and Sam, you said what? 11,000 BC? I guess I say 11,000. Yep. Or did you actually say 10,100 BC? Oh, shit.

Doesn't matter. Either way, then Sam is the winner. Yeah. It say 10,100 BCE? Oh, shit. Doesn't matter. Either way, then Sam is the winner. Yeah. It was 30,000 BCE. Okay. I was on the right scale order of magnitude. You were, yes. That's what I was worried about is being embarrassed about like completely wrong like hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Yeah. I was also on the right order of magnitude, so. Yeah. Okay. Century boy. I think I want Sari to go first. Okay. Okay, well, nowadays there are a lot of tools or other work gear that straddle the line between form and style, or form and function.

And from my quick research, it seems like all of that started kicking off around 100 years ago. It took until the 1950s or so until leather tool belts were really a thing. But 1897 was when the first Swiss army knife was patented as the Swiss officers and sports knife with like many small tools in a compact package. And before that, some people were probably just like storing their tools in a workshop or carrying them around in boxes by hand. But not everyone, especially women who needed their tools and did not have pockets because fashion. So I'd like to introduce you to the Chatelaine, C-H-A-T-E-L-A-I-N-E, a fashion accessory slash tool holder that was popular during the

1800s it's like a belt hook or clasp worn at the waist with chains that hold all your tools depending on your needs and job that's so awesome it's like i can't believe i didn't know about it before today but so like for example a shadowaine could have household stuff like a pair of scissors, a thimble, a tape measure, keys, smelling salts for when you're feeling faint and things like that. And that's where the name came from because there were a common housekeeper accessory. Like the mistress of a chateau would have a Chatelaine to hold all the keys. mistress of a chateau would have a chatelaine to hold all the keys. But if you were a nurse, it might have a thermometer, a case for safety pins, a styptic pencil to clot wounds, and a leather pouch to hold other tools.

Or if you were fancy and royalty, it could be bejeweled and have crosses and notebooks and eyeglass cases and even miniature painting sets. It seems like there was a lot of custom work done, and it was really common for a lot of major jewelers to make and sell shadow lanes. And that's my fact. I just love that humans are so human because of course we are going to find ways to keep our hands free, but make sure we have tools nearby when we need them and make it fashion. And make it fashion because these are fashion.

That's cool. I love them lots. This one that I've seen has 15, 16 tools on it. Too many tools. Most of them are much more like in the realm of five. But one of the tools on this one appears to be a straight up unsheathed knife. Yeah, you just like pin it to your little waistline on your dress. Yeah, like don't sit down wrong.

Yeah. Maybe it's just a letter opener. But yeah, I mean, the ones with like a pen and a notebook, I'm like, oh, that's adorable. So you can always write down your thoughts, your poems. Yeah. There are a couple that they found. And I think a lot is speculation of what they were used for because I think they were sold or went out of fashion

and so now we're just discovering them and guessing. Yeah. But there was one that had like little notes tucked into it that seemed like it was someone's grieving Chatelaine. So they like carried it around

and had had little reminders to like keep them motivated throughout the day and like remember their lost loved one. And I thought that was very sweet. Oh man, these are so weird because a lot of them I'm looking at, I'm like, I have no idea what any of that stuff's for.

And also there's a lot of like, like, gosh, these need to come back. Yeah, it's a lot of secret compartments. If like little me had discovered this, I loved a secret compartment. I still do, but I'm more constrained by society but i would absolutely have made one for myself of like strings oh i don't think i'm gonna walk around with like strings dangling from my pants now with like little pockets but when i was a kid

absolutely i would but like this is the great thing because like pockets are good but like maybe this is better you got your your earbuds on there what else am i carrying in my pockets all the time now you get your earbuds your keys just a flask of whiskey yeah that's the thing you have to think about what tools you need on a regular basis so like little little microphone i don't know little yeah a little snack for later. A microphone. A snack. Yeah. A cliff bar. Some wacky props for your videos. Uh-huh. A ring light.

A little ring light. Yes. Cliff on ring light. Maybe a little foundation or something. Some concealer just in case you have a blemish. Chapstick. Oh, of course. You need chapstick.

Very important. I've always got chapstick in the pocket. But you want a cool sterling silver case that you put your chapstick into. And then it's like you take the thing off and it's like, oh, look at me. Because then it's decorative. Then people look at it. It's like, oh, what is that? What is in your mysterious holder?

I'll never tell. Yeah, it's just blistex. Wow. That's not a particular science fact, but I am deeply charmed. I guess the topic is tools. This is a tool. It is a tool for tools. When did you say leather tool belts existed?

Like the 1950s, like quite recently. I thought you probably meant 1850s, but the 1950s? Yeah. 50s but the 1950s yeah i think they were so my asterisk on all of this uh is that a lot of cultures have invented various like sacks and pouches that you tie to your waist yeah and so uh specifically from my quick research the tool belts as we know them today with like pouches designed for like modern-ish tools like that a carpenter would use or that a painter would use are more recent. Like aprons existed before then in various pouches. But like something that a tradesperson would strap to their bodies and carry stuff around is like very recent, surprisingly recent.

You know what I want on my shadow lane, I've realized, is just a fork. That's great. All right. Sam, what do you got for me? So we've talked a lot about humans using tools, but surprisingly little about animals that use tools. So I want to talk about an animal that uses a tool. It's pretty well known that crows use tools mostly to get food. Usually that means dropping something hard like shellfish or nuts onto like

rocks to crack them open. But there are a few species of corvids and crows, specifically the new Caledonian crow that actually fashion their own tools. And in this case, hooks that they used to pull bugs out of holes in trees. And in fact, I mean, I assume that they have been using hooks to catch food

since way before humans thought to do that, because the oldest known fish hook is only 23,000 years old. So crows have beat us to the punch on that one. But it's not the fact that they make tools that I want to talk about. It's the sort of culture that New Caledonian crows have around their tools that I think is really cool and sort of mirrors behavior that you see in human artisans of all types. So first, the methods and precision that crows use to craft tools and the stuff that they make them out of

changes as the crows age, but maybe not in the way that you would think. So they make tools by finding soft branches and then they snip the branch off the tree. They snip all the little extra pieces off of that branch and then they sharpen the end and like bend it until it makes a little hook. And that's what they use to dip into trees to get bugs. And researchers have observed that crows that spend more time finding the perfect thing to build into a hook and sharpening the end of it just right and perfectly. Make hooks that can pull bugs out of holes way faster. But it seems like spending a ton of time doing that is sort of a young crows game.

So younger birds with less tool experience. This is very reflective of my own reality. Yeah, mine too. Having observed spending way more time finding the perfect branch, shaping it just right, being very picky about it. But older crows who've made tons of hooks in their lives look for a stick that's just good enough,

make it kind of a bad hook, stick it in and get a bug, and then maybe just like drop the hook on the ground, whereas younger birds hold onto their hooks longer. They put it on their shadow line. Yeah, they wish they had one of those. So they make crappy hooks that get the job done which is reflective of when you're old or old getting old like me you figure out what works and you just do that because who has the energy to find

to to like do something perfect every single time it's exhausting only young people can do that second they take care of their tools so it might just be a stick to you and me, but a crow's hook took a lot of time and effort for it to make. And a crow seems to know the value of a good hook because 84% of the time, crows will store their tool for safekeeping when they aren't using it instead of just tossing it. So most of the time they just stand on it while they're doing things like eating or resting just to keep it where it is but when they're doing something really technically difficult like eating food that's hard to eat or climbing up in trees to hunt for food they'll stick it in a hole in a tree so just for safekeeping and the stick in a hole method leads to way less sticks being dropped while

they're doing stuff but researchers have noticed that other birds will swoop in and other crows will swoop in and steal the stick while they're doing their thing. And how does this apply to humans? An artist's tool is their livelihood, I guess. And if it was me, I wouldn't want to drop my computer or whatever out of a tree if I was in it eating bugs. So I keep it on a desk. The tree is the desk of the bird the end everybody knows that

uh but what is that like different between the old and the young ones i think i think 84 percent of the time they don't throw their stick away no matter how old they are it seems like but then the rest of them even if it's even if it's a crappy stick that they just made i think even if it's a crappy stick they're like that's good think even if it's a crappy stick. They're like, might as well go on to this crappy stick. But it takes them less time if they're older to find a stick that's good. So they can lose a stick. Man. See, that is amazing because not only is this bird using a tool, it's fashioning the tool.

the tool but also it's showing human analogous behavior with regard to how the tool is made and the expertise of the of the person fashioning yeah or the entity that's pretty cool man how do they figure that out how do you do you just like steal like time a bird and how long it takes to make a good hook i think so i think that i mean i think they just observed a lot of them and saw right older ones were just like get a, get a bug, whatever. It's wild to me if you can like look at a New Caledonian crow and be like, well, that's Susan. She's 18. And that's her daughter, Emily. And she's a young crow.

Like, I don't know. I assume that you get to know the crows. You spend way too much time looking at the crows. And then you can tell them apart. So I have to now decide who is the recipient of what amount of Hank bucks. And I'm going to give Sari four Hank bucks because I love the Chatelaine. And I'm going to give Sam six Hank bucks because that was very good. I love tool use in animals.

And I had no idea about that. And it makes me think love tool use in animals, and I had no idea about that. And it makes me think about tool use in animals differently. I humbly accept your Hank books. Thank you. I appreciate the way that you're approaching this. And that means that our final scores are Sam with six point and Sari with five. Congratulations, Sam. A resident everyman has come out on top, come from behind with a underdog victory.

And now it's time to ask the science couch. We've got a listener question for our couch of finally honed scientific mind. It's from at JJVV who asks, what's the oldest tool known to still be in use? Wow, that's a cool question. Is a is it a mill that was my thought oh yeah uh is it uh you're more you're more kind than i am to the question uh and like thinking about is your answer about penises

yeah the but well i i thought of it more as like this felt this felt very subjective to me because tools have evolved and built on each other and i think the the question askers intent was like you said what what has been passed on through generations yeah and and been used and it's probably like a grindy of some sort some some mortar of grinder. Mortar and pestle, probably. Yeah, yeah. Something really durable. Yeah. That's hard to make.

Yeah, my other thought, the oldest company, and I don't know if this is actually true, but I know that a very old company is Zildjian, the cymbal company. Oh. And so I thought, cymbals, but cymbals aren't really tools. And also, just because a company is old doesn't mean any individual symbol is but yeah so so you so for example the oldest tool might be like the word

mom oh interesting because that is that is a that is our as i think that's one of the words that we think is probably uh has a a connective root to a lot of different languages. Like language as a tool. Yeah. Words are definitely tools. They're the best one. They're a pretty good one. Well, I went very literal and I was like, rock smash.

And that's the oldest rock. What's the oldest rock? Well, the oldest rock used as a tool oh okay oh yeah yeah but we're not still using that rock no but but i i was thinking of it like we're learning from it yeah we're learning from that rock and like other people still use like i'm sure there are cultures in the world today that use rocks as tools so like even though someone is not holding that specific rock in their hand, there's probably a rock out there that someone has been using to like slice or smash for a very long time.

And it'd work in a pinch. Yeah. If you really needed to smash. And that was the only thing available. I mean, it'd probably be better than the average rock because somebody else made it into a good smashing rock. And I'm sure all all anyone needs to do all any of these like archaeologists need to do is take one of these rocks that they're like, this is a tool and then use it again. And then it's the oldest tool that's still in use. So you know what I could do?

I could skin a deer right now. I'd like to smash an animal on the head. You could cut a leaf and be like, ho-ho, I used it. That's it. You don't have to do something particularly useful to use a tool. So the oldest stone tools were first found in 2011, but scientists reported a new batch in 2015 at the Lomekwi III site in Lake Turkana in Kenya.

And they are from around 3.3 million years ago, and they predate the earliest humans in the homogenous. So maybe they were made by Kenyanthropus platypus or Australopithecus afarensis. So like human ancestors developing stone tools. And then like the next- Was one of the words you just said platypus? Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Platyops is what it is. And it's autocorrected. Oh, okay. Okay. So I knew platypuses were weird, but i didn't know they were a recent human ancestor but yeah they were like uh they found hammers and anvils and sharp stone flakes most likely for cutting and there is a lot of of like uh anthropological evidence that feels very subtle to my eyes but i'm sure is very obvious to someone who studies

these things of like this was an intentional or it looks like to be an intentional flaking for a cutting tool. And then the next most recent ones are the Oldowan tools, which are in like the 2.5 to 1.2 million years ago. And those ones come up pretty frequently as like the oldest known type of stone tool, like Homo habilis, one of our more closely related ancestors manufactured these kinds of stone tools. And they're similarly found at archaeological dig sites just slightly more recently. All right. Well, that was another level of fascinating. Thank you to at JJVV for your question. If you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at

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Thank you for listening. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who edits a lot of these episodes along with Hirokumatsu Shima. Our social media organizer is Paola Garcia Prieto. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Chakravarti. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish.

And we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. In 2020, researchers reported the first use of a tool by honeybees who were observed taking and altering things from their environment to transform their home. More specifically, the honeybees were observed taking animal poop and using it to line the entrance of their nests to ward off giant, mean, bee-destroying hornets. Oh, wait.

So poop is a tool? Poop is a tool if you use it as a tool. If you use it for work, not fun, then it's a tool. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.