A Short Summary of the Past and Present of Stone

By James Oram, Grade 7

From the forming of the world to the current situation of the Earth there have always been rocks, stones and fossils. You probably know what a rock is, I mean there is probably a bed of rocks somewhere near you. But unless you've been living under a piece of wood or are a toddler, you probably know what a rock is. But do you know what the history of rocks is? No? How about how to identify rocks? Still no? Well I'll show you.

The history of rocks is not as simple as you think. People have been making weapons, walls and other things out of rocks for millions of years. Specifically 2.5 million years with the beginning of the Stone Age. Now if you don't know what the Stone Age is, it is the time where scientists found the earliest evidence of humans using stone tools. Now the Stone Age ended about 5000 years ago when people started using metal for their tools and weapons. But a Stone Age tool would probably look like a rock that has been sharpened and put through a wooden handle. This would probably look like a cone shaped rock with a rounded side -where the flat side should be- put in a wooden handle about the size of your hand give or take. These tools were used for just about everything, from hammering sticks into the ground to pounding herbs to make medicines. Not only this, but they would make knives too. These knives would also be made out of stones; however, they would use whetstones to sharpen these stones into knives. Next they would put the sharp blade on the handle. Not only this they would also make knives by using the aforementioned tools (also known as hammering tools) to hammer off sharp pieces or stone and these would be furthermore sharpened and cleaned up until it resembled a knife. Needless to say the stone age was a key moment in the history of stone.

Another thing people generally think about when they hear stone is boulders and minerals, and while I can not tell you how to start a quarry or mine. I can tell you several ways to identify rocks. As you can probably guess there are several ways to tell what type of rock you are looking at. For example, the texture. Most rocks have a unique texture albeit very similar to other rocks. One example we can use is shale. Shale has a rather basic texture but with enough practice I'm sure you can identify it. Granted I can't identify shale from other types of rocks. One type of rock you can easily identify is quartz. Quartz is one of the most common minerals and can be found everywhere. This is because many popular stones are just variations of quartz, and other natural reasons on top of that. Quartz is a very diverse rock, for example amethyst is a type of quartz. Not only this, so is citrine, rose quartz, and milk quartz, ect. One way to always find quartz is to look for a cold gem with a glassy texture. For a more indepth look I suggest you check out a rocks and minerals book.

In conclusion, rocks were used mainly in the stone age, but have actually been in use for longer than that. Rocks were then used for foundation, and now decoration.