The Universal Tool Kit Out of Africa to Native California

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KUMEYAAY.INFO is thrilled to have renowned book author Paul Campbell as an expert contributor — his latest book "The Universal Took Kit" (2014) provides a wealth of information, including other reviews about books by Paul Douglas Campbell for sale on KUMEYAAY website: "Earth Pigments and Paint of the California Indians Meaning and Technology" and "Survival Skills of Native California."

PREFACE:

From the earliest Stone Age in Africa to 20th century California, our ancestors smashed rock to make tools. The tools from broken stones formed a kit surprisingly similar the world over. Elements of that kit live on today in remote corners of the globe among people close to the earth. The most important survival kit ever invented, it altered the very shape of human species and for millions of years was truly a universal tool kit.

Despite its universality, especially among hunter-gather bands, it often goes unrecognized in the archaeological record. The kit is all but invisible. These are not the pretty points of museum show cases. Habitually these tools were simply found or made on the spot, used and discarded. The cubicle-bound mentality of the vicarious age finds difficult to imagine that for millions of years our genus survived in an untamed world with simple expedient stone tools.

We invented the kit but then the kit made us, dramatically transformed us into who we are, physically and socially. We are inextricably linked to this kit. With this equipment, should we be left without modern technology today, without steel knives, hatchets and the endless cleaver gimmickry of modern survival technologists, we could still survive in the wild almost anywhere.

And we could do it without anything. Because, at the bottom, the kit does not consist of stone tools. It does not consist of concrete pieces we must lug along — the Australian Alborgine made from a rock at his feet the tool he needed, left it and went on. The kit weighs nothing. The kit is carried in the mind....

The pictures and writing in this section are parts of Paul Campbell's newest book:

Classic Paul Campbell, "The Universal Tool Kit" contains a wealth of researched information, including photographs and illustrations, detailed how to articles (pages 50-51 pictured above).

SURVIVAL SKILLS of Native California

Paul's fully-researched book on its second edition:

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BUY THIS BOOK NOW on amazon.com Photos and text courtesy of Paul D. Campbell, author of SURVIVAL SKILLS OF NATIVE CALIFORNIA. Paul's book features living (and now deceased) Native American California Indigenous people of the greater San Diego area, and details their traditional Indian hunting, primitive weapons and aboriginal survival techniques and aboriginal methods...Paul's book is available for sale at Shumup Ko Hup Indian store WEBSITE HOWKA.COM.