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- Angela Fitzgerald: Ancient
weapons are a thing of the past,

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but for Joel Dickinson
of Green Bay,

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their ingenuity is timeless.

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[hard rock music]

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- Joel Dickinson: Most people
probably don't even know

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what an atlatl is.

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Most people would know it
as the spear thrower.

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- Angela: Thousands of years
before the first bowstring,

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the atlatl
was the great equalizer,

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a high-velocity invention
of the Ice Age.

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- What that allowed us to do was
to hunt at a greater distance,

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which allowed us
to keep ourselves safe

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from the animal
that we're trying to hunt.

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[spear thumps]

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- Angela: That prehistoric
engineering is reborn

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in Joel's basement workshop.

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- I make replicas
of ancient weaponry.

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I make stone tools, clubs,
atlatls, spears.

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- Angela: He forges
a lethal edge

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from a stubborn shard
of obsidian,

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bridging the present day
with the ancient past.

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- They must've had
infinite patience and curiosity

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and great knowledge.

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I could turn this into a knife
if I wanted,

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I could turn it into a spear
if I wanted.

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It's extremely sharp.

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[sharpener scrapes]

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It's looking pretty good.

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- Angela: Each chip is an echo
from the Ice Age,

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turning raw material
into weapons that once stood

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as the only thing between
humanity and extinction.

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- We were a hunter
and we were a prey.

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We stood shoulder to shoulder

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with the best predators
of the day.

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[steady drum music]

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- Angela: The predators
captured Joel's imagination,

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but an illustration
captured his attention.

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- I came to this page
in particular,

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and it has a bunch
of Pleistocene-era animals.

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And we have the mammoth
and the mastodon here,

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we have a giant sloth,
giant armadillo, American bison,

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and the very bottom
is a little human.

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I was just awestruck.

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We existed alongside all
these beasts.

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It just blew me away,
and as a child,

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I was always fascinated
with ancient weaponry.

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- Angela: And the rest, as they
say, is ancient history.

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- Joel: These little
purple arrowheads

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are the first ones I ever made.

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Now, that's flint.

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This is what they would've used
here in Wisconsin.

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We didn't have obsidian
in Wisconsin.

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- Angela: Joel actually
taught himself

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how to make these
prehistoric tools

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by reverse engineering
timeless traditions.

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- It was a lot of trial
and error.

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They needed to know how
to knap an arrowhead.

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They needed to know how
to make sinew and process it.

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They needed to know how
to make pine tar pitch.

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And when they find
ancient arrowheads,

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the fingerprints are still stuck
in the pine tar pitch

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that they used.

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That's what made us
a fierce beast,

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is our intellectual capacity

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to know how to take the things
up from our environment,

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the stones and the pine tar
pitches and the sinews

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and combine it
into making ourselves

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a very lethal
and effective weapon.

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- Angela: Besides weapons,

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Joel also crafts
handmade instruments,

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reclaiming the music that sings
to his ancient soul.

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[low flute note]

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- Joel: Birdbone one here, it's
a little bit higher pitched.

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[high flute notes]

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And then the bullroarer.

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That's what the Crocodile Dundee
used.

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[bullroarer buzzes]

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This goes back
about 50,000 years.

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So, you could communicate
over a distance.

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- Angela: That connection
to the past

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has traveled
through the millennia,

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passing from hand to hand
until it reached Joel.

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- I get a connection.

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I get a connection to all those
people that have come before me,

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all my ancestors.

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It's being able to do something
that my ancestors did

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10,000 years ago.

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- Angela: Joel guards
these primeval lessons

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and realizes it is these raw
instincts that make us human.

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[upbeat acoustic guitar music]

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- I think there's that urge
to sometimes wanna be primal.

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To take, you know, an atlatl
and to let that baby go

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and watch it soar in the air.

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It's almost like time traveling
in a sense,

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where you get
to experience something

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that is an ancient thing,
and it's cool.

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That allows you to kind of
picture yourself in another time

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and another place and say,

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"You know,
I could have done this.

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I could be brave."

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[upbeat acoustic guitar music]