 Since prehistoric times, fishing has been a crucial skill for obtaining food. Many methods have been invented, spearing, trapping, netting, and angling. In today's video, we're going to explore a few of these in an attempt to make our own fishing pole from scratch. While today's modern poles are complex machines with synthetic materials for optimal performance, the fishing pole dates back to at least 2000 BCE, where it was in use in ancient Egypt and China, with records describing them being made with silk line. There's not a ton of information on how these first fishing poles would have looked, so we're going to take a little creativity and try to make ours out of what was available in the Bronze Age and even raise our own silkworms for the fishing line. Everything we use comes from 8,000 generations of collective innovation and discovery, but could an average person figure it all out themselves and work their way from the Stone Age to today? That's the question we're exploring. Each week, I try to take the next step forward in human history. My name is Andy and this is how to make everything. Be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next step in this journey. Before we jump into crafting our fishing pole, a quick shout out to SaltLife for sponsoring this video. They helped us get in touch with one of the expert team members, Captain Ben Chancey, master fisherman, boat charter captain and host of the YouTube channel, Chew On This. In the video linked in the description and above, Captain Ben is going to put our ancient fishing pole to the test and see if he can actually catch something with it. Make sure to watch the video and see if our pole can withstand the rigors of the open water. If you love fishing, surfing, diving, or just being on the water, make sure to head over to SaltLife's YouTube channel. They post incredible content multiple times a week, so be sure to subscribe. First up, the actual rod. Alright, let's go. It's pretty straight. I need to find a tree that is long and strong enough to hold its own weight, plus the weight of a fish that's fighting to stay in the water. I can do this iron age soon. Well, being light enough to hold upright for a long time, so when hunting for a good and fairly straight tree to cut down. The reel is what we'll be able to use to bring back in the line to catch an actual fish. Modern reels are complex little machines with lots of moving parts. One of the simplest machines that I've already unlocked is the wheel. My fishing reel is going to work off a version of that called the winch, where a wheel is on an axle and acts as a spool with a crank handle attached. Using pine glue to glue some pieces of wood and clay, I was able to make the basic shapes of them and use that to sandcast them in bronze. To polish those off, let's get our fishing line growing. Using a clue from some historical methods, I decided to try raising silkworms once again, which I originally did several years ago for my formal soup project. So once again receiving a dish of teeny tiny eggs. I let them hatch and began the feeding cycle of mulberry leaf paste. Starting out almost microscopic, over the next few weeks they quickly matured and grew and grew and grew. Lauren felt inspired to build them something a little special. So welcome to Silkworm Realty. We have this little beaut today and it is for rent. All right, take a little tour of the property. Here we have a nice mid-century modern home, complete with trim and the finest cardboard siding. Let's take a look inside. In this 10 bedroom, all bathroom unit is available for rent immediately. Do I have a unit for you? His feet are so sticky. What unit should we put him in? He can have this nice lower level condo. Our first tenant. I guess. That's the kitchen. Come here, move more. Ah, he's pooping. This place is so nice. Never seen such a nice place. You guys better pay your rent. I'm a landlord now. While the silkworms move in and continue to develop, let's get the spooled-in reel ready to be loaded up with our line. Then attach it to the polished off bronze pieces I cast to form the simple reel. Now back to the nearly fully matured silkworms. As they get older, I can collect full mulberry leaves to feed them, which they readily enjoyed. For the poor worms, they couldn't afford Lauren's luxury condos, I constructed some public housing for everyone else. As they complete their larval stage, the caterpillars start to spin their cocoons out of the fine silk thread, making one continuous thread that's nearly a mile long. Left to fully develop, the moth will dissolve the thread to escape and emerge as their adult form. I'm a big boy. Domesticated to the point of not being able to really fly, they really only have one goal at this point. While the cocoons collected, I pulled off the short pieces of silk that were used to attach the cocoon, including them all off, then adding them to a pot boiling water, which causes the thread to slowly unravel. The first batch of thread was a bit messy, very chunky and inconsistent. But eventually got a handle for it and could pull some nice, even thread and start wrapping it to the reel. Since the strength of the silk line might be a little weaker, I had Lauren make a simple net to assist in landing any fish I might manage to catch. For the bait, Lauren had her own suggestion to help catch some actual worms that we hadn't grown so attached to. I love it. Crocs, great for worm sticks. That's real. He's really on the stick. Now that we have the portion of the stick I'm going to use for our worm stick. I will take our hammer and our chisel and kind of just dig out little nodes. So eventually when we rub the stick on this stick, it'll make a noise that makes the worms want to come out of the ground. I hear the worms already. When you do this, it mimics the vibrations in the ground that make the worm think that a mole is digging. And so they kind of are like, oh no, a mole's here. So they all go up to the surface and try to get away. But then that's when we're waiting for them. There. That's a good enough point to, you know, dig into the ground. The one thing a worm can't resist. Bet you didn't know it was a musician. Stick that in there. I don't see anybody. Everybody must be sleeping. But sometimes you just need to dig around and find some in the old fashioned way. I steamed the rod with some leftover walnut husk juice to give it a nice finish. For the hook, I took an excess piece of bronze from one of my pores, bent and pounded it into shape and sharpening a point onto it. All right, so next for the fishing pole I need to add some guides. Those are the little loops that go along the pole and help guide the line down without it getting tangled. So, cold worked for some scrap pieces of bronze, made them a little bit wire shaped and now I'm just gonna wrap them around some cylinders and make loops. Use bronze nails to attach the reel. Made a nice leather grip so it would be easier to handle. So we're gonna make a bobber, a float bobber specifically. And this is a piece of bamboo. I'm going to find a nice little segment that we can use for the float and then take one of these littler parts of it and slide it into the float to create the weights on either end to keep it level. We're gonna try to cut it. It's a little denser than I thought, so we're gonna, I think I'm gonna try to score it. She did it. All right, so this is the float and we're gonna now take the other side of the bamboo and cut off little pieces that will eventually hold the eyelet, which will then hold the silk. I have measured this and this part does fit in here, which is very good news. So we're gonna cut off the little side guy. If we can. So in order to hold the thread, we're gonna make the little eyelet and use this as an approximate right size for it to be. Beautiful. Mudge this around. So this is the finished product. One side is much more beautiful than the other. Hopefully the fish don't notice. So it eventually, once the silk will go through here and out the other end, it'll keep balancing the water and we will test if it floats. Yay, all right. Here we go, should be all complete. It's got a nice leather grip, float bobber that Lauren made and the hook with our bait. Should be able to reel her in and then we catch something. And then I'm not sure about casting, but that's why I put a bobber on it because I think it'll be better to just kind of throw it out there, but I'm not an expert. So I'm gonna send it to somebody a little bit more knowledgeable to try it out and see how well they like it. My biggest concern is probably the thread. There's probably a reason we don't use silk. It is surprisingly strong, but it's not as strong as most synthetic lines are today. So I imagine really only gonna be able to hold up to a couple pounds. Silk is pretty stretchy, so it does have that going for it. So I might be able to give it some resistance, but overall probably not fishing for anything huge. Before mailing it though, I did a quick test of the bobber again with a hook attached and realized the hook was too heavy and made it sink. So I had to add some extra little floaties to the bobber. See if I can get this into a mailing tube and mail it to Florida. I'm gonna try it out. After a few weeks of letting Ben test out my fishing pole, we caught up over Zoom to talk about how well it went. What did you think of it? Yeah, it's almost impossible to catch anything with the line that you guys have on there. The math goes on a typical fish can pull about three times its body weight spurts. You're limited to the size of fish you can catch with it. If you get anything over a pound, you know, three pounds of pressure, which would break your line really quick. You could catch like freshwater fish with it with a, you know, just dropping it on, trying to catch a bram or something like that. It's essentially what I'm using just a little bit more prehistoric. It's what Fred Flintstone would've tried, huh? And I understood what you were trying to do. How we got to where we are right now. Thanks for trying it out. Thanks to Ben's notes. I doubled up the silk thread to make sure I can catch at least some small freshwater fishies. Ooh, he's a strong guy. The line's pretty strong. I'm deep enough. Bobba works. Feels like a vision bull. It's a matter of patience. Maybe he'll catch something. Maybe he won't. Did he get one? Yes. I got the net. Oh no, come on. No. There, they're biting. Just not taking the hook. Oh, he's getting something. Oh, they took the worm. How do they do that? Lead him up to the surface and I can get him in the net. Right over the net. Yup, little guy. Oh, got a strike. Oh, oh, he's so little. Even some really small guys. Just kind of what I was after, but worm's a bit too big for him. Just kind of nibble it. Just a little bit left on there. Definitely works. I don't know if we'll get a bigger fish, but little guys going for it. Whoa, massive. All right, so, took a little bit of tweaking and still does not have the functionality of like a modern pole. Can't really cast too well with it still. Oh, it's massive. It does work and was able to catch a few small guys. So I made my hook a little bit smaller. Could probably catch something maybe a little bit bigger, but good enough to prove their works. Thanks again to Captain Ben for being a part of this and SultLife for sponsoring this video. Make sure you check out the video linked in the description to see if our fishing rod can catch some massive fish, including a Goliath grouper. Thanks guys. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to subscribe and check out other content we have covering a wide variety of topics. Also, if you've enjoyed these series, consider supporting us on Patreon. We are largely a fan-funded channel and depend on the support of our viewers in order to keep our series going. Thanks for watching.