Another thing I just thought about is the way primitive peoples hunted. There's a reason that they began to use stone points on the ends of arrows and spears. My guess is that the stone points are more efective than a firehardened spear.
Maybe that will be my next comparison. Stone points, versus fire hardened spears, versus the ratweiler lashed to the end of a stick. It's crazy that it just might work.
For true field results, that will be a fairl EXTENSIVE and time consuming comparison.
I would be curious about the results.
My first assumptions on primitives progressing to stones from fire-hardened tips would be longevity and reusibility of their weapons and tools. For them, this was a daily, regularly and often reused tool and weapon.
Vs. Survival would (generally) only require short term use and be more about getting by until back to civilization.
I would think the efforts for most people to make a stone work well at the tip of a spear would be too time consuming for most survival situations (????).
I guess it depends on your view of hypothetical survival and how long and how often you believe you may have to use your weapons.
Or maybe you just happen to stumble across the perfect sharp stone for a spear head (???).
Also, you still have to give some value and consideration to "forfeiting" your knife from you side. A stone wouldn't usually be much of a forfeit.
Indians often had knives at certain times in history. I am not extremely knowledgable on Indian history or other primitive history and I will try to not let movies count <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> . But, I don't recall seeing much info about Indians forfeiting their knives for their spears.
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