Sure, science is math and equations and formulas. But it can also be pounding wood with Stone Age axes. Japanese scientists built their own ground stone tools in an effort to figure out how the damn things were used 30,000 years ago.
By examining "telltale fractures and microscopic wear," these scientists hoped they could identify how tools of that era were actually used. Ars Technica has the details:
…the authors used axe-type tools to fell Japanese cedar and maple trees… Axe-type and adze-type tools were used to make a dugout canoe and wooden spears, while adze-type tools and chisel-type tools were used to scrape off the bark of fig and pine. They scraped flesh and grease from fresh and dry hides of deer and boar using adze-type and chisel-type tools. Finally, they used adze-type tools to disarticulate the femur and tibia joints of deer hindlimbs.
Science is fun!
See also: Paleolithic people made handaxes to show off their sexiness, argue some paleontologists
