They invented the screw for pumping water way back in Mesopotamia. The Greeks used screw threads for different things, though mainly pumping water. But Olive Oil Presses was another big use.
Someone mentioned Archimedes, but he made use of the helical screw.
I’ve read intervening posts now and sorry @LSLGuy, the 1710 comment for metal screws is also wrong. They were happening already. Goes back to at least the 1400s in Europe.
Hell, the first screw making machine was patented before the US declared independence.
I looked it up, it was the Wyatt brothers in England in 1760.
I’m going to say, “About 10,000 years”, because that’s how long it took the first time.
For one person, just finding a mine site to mine iron ore, and then maybe make some steel out of it, would likely take a lifetime. Sure, you could pass on the idea of making modern tools to someone of that era, or a child if you have one, but will that idea persist in human understanding long enough for one of your descendants to make that tool in an appreciably shorter period of time than took in reality?
I think the idea to go to iron production instead of bronze is the best. Iron occurs in natural outcroppings. Charcoal and a nice stone/mud smelter are easy to come by. People do this at home as a hobby today. Takes several generations of tries to get a good hammer and anvil, then you can pound out anything.
Primitive screws can be made without a lathe. Start with a square iron rod and hold one end and twist it for a crude screw. Applied threads would be easier then cut ones. You need a round iron rod core and a longer, smaller rod to make the threads. Just wrap the hot “threads” around the hot core and hammer weld as you go. If you do a tight wrap of two rods and only weld one, then you have a fairly accurate thread remaining after you remove the loose one.
Your could also use a carved wooden mold or even a baked clay mold if you can get iron hot enough to pour. That would require making coke from coal.
At any rate making a nut would be difficult. Now would be a good time for a bronze nut cast directly on the threaded rod. Lead would be even easier although I have no idea how hard it is to find lead ore.
After you have a screw, cut some gaps in the thread, case harden it and you have a tap you can use to cut the nut.
Some kind of iron ore is very easy to find most anywhere on our planet. It certainly wouldn’t take a lifetime. It won’t necessarily be high grade, but it will be good enough to smelt if you know what you’re doing.
As to the OP, assuming I was dedicated to making that one thing (say, I had to produce a functional example of that thing in order to be sent back to my proper time by the alien space bats), and if I were sent back to where I am now but just 10,000 years ago, I’d say:
Let’s take the saw as an example. Here are the steps as i see them:
Step Zero: grow or find enough food to do all of that.
There’s reasons why it took us 10000 years the first time, even when we were working in groups. Feeding yourself will be a full-time job just by itself.
I did specify “where I am now”, where nutritious food was ridiculously easy to find.
Abundant easy-to-gather seafood gives plenty of time to do other things.
I’d hazard that most of that time could be accounted for by most people not knowing such things were possible. On top of that, it’s not always obvious what tool would be useful for making a task easier until you’ve had the tool and used it.
Many of those steps would make it easier to procure and prepare food, in the end.
Well, you (any you) post enough stuff you’re bound to say something really dumb now and again. It seems that post was my turn for this week or two.
I’ll just slink off to lick my wounds and consider the error of my ways. Which can be summarized as posting from my phone off general recollection w no confirming research after a fine meal, some excellent pours of good booze, and a stogie. Long on confidence, short on sense.
Thanks to all who posted to set the record straight.
And yet, it actually did happen once.
Surely you could form some sort of rudimentary lathe.
Inside out… …and it exploded.
You joke, but two forked sticks stuck in the ground with another stick tied across the top of each fork, and a bowstring wrapped around the thing you want to turn, can be a “rudimentary lathe”.
There’s a reason I put cordage before any toolmaking on my steps. I think people often underestimate just how important cordage was in pre-industrial societies, especially pre-metal ones. Ditto for pottery when that became available.
Ancillary question: how long would it take to produce good booze and a stogie? Fine meal is fairly easy near a seashore…
Our imagined time traveler knows that making something like a handsaw from bronze or iron is possible and is going to be working towards that known goal. On the other hand, we don’t know what the process was for developing bronze or cast iron originally. I imagine that the process took time and even generations. Perhaps originally, someone discovered copper and tried to make things from it and then discovered that adding this other stuff (tin) changed the properties of the metal. So it wasn’t as single-minded a pursuit as I expect our time traveler will be undertaking.
Reading Wikipedia, apparently the earliest bronze might have started when someone smelted stannite, a mineral that contains copper and tin (and iron as well).
Not so.
I think that most (all?) anthropologist since the mid 1960’s agree that hunter-gatherers had to spend on average 15-20 hours a week to live healthy lives.
This of course changes once some of them settle down, it’s easier to move to where the food is, as compared to raising crops and keeping live stock. @MrDibble knows his own country and I suspect that he’s referring to, e.g. the Blombos cave and others like it, which indicates an abundance of sea food and a rich culture.
Oh, and ETA:
If you’re sitting thererwith a freaking time machine, scavenging it for materials would be the obvious first step. There must be plenty of copper wire, lighter metal alloys, some steel, possibly rubber.
That’s if they’re living in tribes, and have parents to teach them how to hunt and gather. We can’t count on that.
Yes, a bow lathe is fairly easy But it won’t cut iron or brass. But you can use the bow lathe to make a better lathe.
That’s actually an outdated view, based on Sahlins et al only including hunting and gathering, and not for instance the considerable task of making and maintaining hunting and gathering implements, in their workload assesments. More realistic evaluations put the recent hunter-gatherer work week at around 30 - 40 hours, which is roughly the same as us modern cubicle folk, but WAY better than subsistence farmers had it. So the “original affluent people” still holds, in a way.
Also, from personal experience, crafting natural material arrows from scratch, sitting around a fire is pretty light work compared to most work. But it’s still mandatory and ongoing, for a H-G.