The oldest, most common surviving artifact of humanity is the 'aechulian hand axe' a clumsy name for the teardrop shaped lithic tools found throughout the old world. How old? if you accept evolutionary theory they were the SAKs of mankind when he still wasn't quite fine tuned himself, or still a half finished lump of clay or dirt pile waiting for the fingers or breath of God to settle on the finished product. No doubt other skills such as cordage making, knotting and fire of course were early inventions. But it was that ancient cutting edge that everything is based on ; disposable diapers, this computer keyboard, canned whip creme. Is it any wonder we can bring this stuff onto an airliner, yet the one ancient companion we MODIFY OUR ENVIRONMENT TO HELP US is confiscated? Oetzi's last line of defense on that snow covered mountaintop was a knife. The Roman Senate bypassed lengthy impeachment hearings over Cleopatra's dress and simply 'stuck it ' to Caesar in the Senate itself, the last gasp of a Republic gone mad with empire. The Vikings recognised the universal utility of a knife, codifying laws that guaranteed even a slave's right to carry a knife. We shake hands with our knife or sword arm and (thanks to rennaissance italian nobles) open doors for our women to take an assassin's dagger first. Periodicaly society gets all happyface and sings about "flowers in your hair" but 3+ decades later Bobby Darren is still singing about MACK THE KNIFE on a custom car stereo installation misswire that causes the engine computer sensing units to cut out over 50 MPH. Then your british mechanic unscrews it with his SAK, mutters " whats all this then" deploys THE BADE, and like Alexander the Great solves the riddle of the Gordian knot <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />