Visitors at the Lake Dwelling Museum are testing a Stone Age drilling machine
How do you drill a hole into a stone?
Stone Age techniques you can touch, experience firsthand, and understand.
Most important to the pile dwellers were the Stone Age tools.
But how did they drill holes to fix the handle?
The stone drilling or boring with a reed of elder and quartz sand, carried out with the fiddle bow, served the production of mace and axe heads - surely the most valued tools of the Stone Age. Archeological experiments showed that it took more than a day to manufacture a hammer axe. Most likely these hammer axes were more of a prestige or status symbol for the owner, rather than a working tool. Traces of blows found at prehistoric skeletons clearly originate from stone axe blades.
The results of other stone drillings or borings presumably were by far more peaceful. Following the same principle, but instead built from limestone and with flint drills, they were used to fabricate white stone beads. Strung onto various rows and divided by so-called chain slides, they were worked into beautiful pearl necklaces.