Knife made from feces: The improvisation of man or the big trick in 20 years?

Have you ever heard of a knife made from . human feces?

In the past, there was a fairly common anecdote about this strange knife, recorded by Wade Davis - anthropologist at the University of British Columbia in 1998 "Shadows in the Sun" . It happened as follows:

The family of an Inuit man (also known as the Eskimos, living in Greenland) hid all essential items when trying to persuade him to leave the igloo and return to the family. But what is surprising is that this incident caused the man to accidentally create an extremely genius invention.

"In the freezing winter breeze, he stepped out of the igloo to defecate, then used the frozen waste to sharpen it into a blade. It was hard enough to kill a dog" - quoted in the book Davis book.

The story was played by Davis from an Inuit named Olayuk Narqitarvik. Regardless of the authenticity, Davis always considered this an entertaining story, and a symbol of the Inuit weather ability.

Can frozen waste kill a dog?(Illustration).

But this is not the first time the idea of using manure as an instrument has been heard. For example, explorer Peter Freuchen once wrote in his autobiography in 1953, that he once managed to escape a snow pit thanks to a chisel made entirely from manure.

What is real damage?

An anthropologist at Ken State University named Metin Eren, who has been following this story of Davis on NPR since high school years. Because of the virtuality of fecal knives , he decided with his colleagues. Re-execute and check if a knife made from stool can cause enough such damage.

Eren began the experiment by eating like an Inuit, with a diet full of meat from salmon, beef to turkey."This menu is really hard. The first few days were of course great for someone who doesn't like meat, but by the third day I started getting a headache."

On the fourth day, Eren proceeded to collect "ingredients ", shape the knife and then freeze at -20 ° C. He then tested the sharpness of the knife on a piece of pig skin and a piece of meat.

Eren proceeded to collect the "ingredients", shape the knife and then freeze it at -20 ° C.

What about the result? Even though Eren tried to come up with the most ideal test conditions - from freezing, sharpening of knives, to using cold skin instead of leather at normal temperatures . the knives still melted and shattered. out. What is left on the skin are long brown streaks, you probably know it.

The above experiment, published in October 2019, suggested that the use of manure as a knife was fictional. However, according to Henry Huntington - an arctic expert in Alaska, such results do not mean that the story has no value."This is probably a resourceful lesson, that you can never run out of options."

"The message of the story lies in: Inuit people are not only afraid but also take advantage of the cold for their daily life."

Cut a piece of pig skin with a "stool" knife.As a result .

But scientifically, as in Eren's view, these unfounded stories are really a concern."Once someone has used an unfounded story to justify a point of view, later there will be others who make assertions from baseless things without actual data."

What is science if it comes from misinformation? Is not fake news - fake news or what?