We had that conversation before, was mine too. I just walked just under 14 miles, think I found a petroglyph for the Mound Builder civilization. I gotta set some time once I get my UV camera set up to go over the rocks. The route I used along the river mostly destroyed the hillside and elevated the shore of the river by 20 feet so as to prevent floods from destroying the rail tracks, which is unfortunate, cause the soil here is high alkaline. Only this that survives in this soil is where the Indians would cook oyster shells to make lye. It changes the Ph. H balance of the soil. If I’m correct about the petroglyph, then it means somebody more than likely seasonly fished there, meaning up on the cliff there is a burial ground. There are caves all through the hillside too, the Indians either buried the the mounds below, or in the crypt.
Problem is… both the original shoreline and any mounds are gone. Buried or blasted away… I found the very rare rock of the original hillside they didn’t feel the need to blow up.
The dexterity of lockpicking… yeah, ummm… I don’t have it yet. I’m a absolute brute when single pin picking (that is hitting pins individually, intentionally)… First doorknob I had was a generic of a generic… A company called Brinks has generic locks of kwikset… and I picked it first… too simple, no clue what I was doing, open.
Then I found this brand called Mountain Locks… Was shocked how very similar they were, just a little wobbly… well, I should say more wobbly. Opened just by saying open sesame. Give it a scary look, pops open, doesn’t want no trouble.
Then I tried the cheapest Kwikset… Universally disliked by locksmiths. It used to be the cheapest and worst. My first time encountering security pins… in late 2014, Kwikset got tired of everyone saying they were horrible, and realized all they had to do was carve into two pins, and picking got way harder. Every time you thought you got it open, it would merely get stuck in that grove, start to move, and then just snicker at me.
I became worried I was some sort of idiot, as nobody ever mentioned them having such pins, the opposite in fact.
Well… I put a tremendous amount of force at a absurd angle, like a brutish angry man, and those security pins gave in.
If I can’t get a security pin… I often can, but not always, I just push it all angry till something works…
Some locks have magnets, different strength pins all through, ball bearings, pins in 2-3 parts, so if you think it is being pushed up, only part it, some shaped like spindles, others, like mushrooms.
Some have trick or hidden pins in other locations. Some locks are absolutely absurd, someone went to town on the design features… looks, like it came from another planet. Most pin holes for pins are smoothbore, but some thread them, like a screw, so every spot feels like a open sheerline. Some requires each pin to be turned at a specific angle (can take weeks to learn how to pick those, seem videos, not pretty, each day, hours practice on one lock).
Few guys have the dexterity and finesse to do that. The top safe crackers don’t need to drill safes, they can hear it click in place perfectly. They’ve tested this, putting feathers inside of a safe, as it spun, when two feathers hit… they guy spinning could hear and feel it. I can’t do that. I really wish I could.
It is very interesting psychology wise, cause since Longinius, we’ve focused on visual quirks in seeing and knowing. In the haptic sense, understanding is certainly off. Most if the time, I don’t know how I really did it. Just… I follow the techniques I watch carefully, watched hundreds of hours of YouTube videos… mimick it like a dumb ape, can repeat the directions, write a book on it… but the lock either opens or it doesn’t, I can’t really do a countdown. A few guys can. I can’t, many can’t. That is why it is so damn interesting pphilosophically. How do we know applied science, for example, works as we expert it to in observational data mode, if we gotta rely on haptic actions we don’t much consider.
Most difficult aspect of archeology is learning how to use a dental pick… in terms of dexterity. The tools are a mix of what a Dentist uses, and a Brick Mason. I would say, a lockpicking tool set is closer to the wide variety dentist use, or surgeons use. Archeologists use simple dental picks, no fancy varient. Your just picking dirt.
Now, when cleaning fossils, paleontologists use a much wider array of tools. A example, imagine a slab of slate filled with Cronoids dating to the Silurian Period, they looked like flowers with vertebrates all through them. As sea plants, they could suddenly die in mass if the sea floor mud suddenly shifted. They are left in amazing, wavy, often intact patterns, white fossil to grey background… It can take weeks to months to properly clean them, a slab of just a few costing sounsands of dollars if cleaned to picture perfect perfection, with a Zen flow quality, as if they we’re flowers in the field bending to the wind… the back of the non fossil areas ground down and smoothed. Obviously, more than just a dental pick. It is amazing to look at, and something you can feel as well. Life in motion.
