The necessity of the knife

Ever since man’s ancestors began to hunt and kill other animals for food, he has needed tools to assist him in breaking apart the carcass. It would be a long time before man invented metal implements to assist with this chore, so with necessity being the mother of invention, our ancestors fashioned crude cutting implements from flaky chips of stone, to become the first knives.

The initial metal implements were honed from bronze, a mixture of molten copper and tin, around the Middle East about 3700BC and I will wager that it didn’t take long before some enterprising young metalworker created the first bronze knives and swords. Of course, bronze held a better edge than stone, was a lot stronger and lasted much longer so by about 1200BC bronze had replaced all stone tools in Europe. Fast forward to about 800BC when the first iron implements and consequently knives and swords were manufactured. Later on again, iron eventually became ‘steel’ as the technology improved.

To this day, steel technology is still advancing, but excellent knife steel has been around now for a long time as witnessed by the superb Japanese