That's trouble.

Uh oh

yay get to hear a "sages" story before the plot kills them. :D

He was resting on some rocks when I found him, me thinks the porcupine isn't fully in her right mind.

"knapped stones" means that Quannaq knows how to shape rocks into tools. That definitely means the martens were also evolving!

They discovered flint!

Wait, if the martens have been working with flint long enough to pick up knapping - an incredibly complicated art - why haven't they mastered fire?

Actually, hominids were using knapped stones long before fire. Even hominids as far back as Australopithecus--aka Lucy--may have used knapped stones. It isn't that hard. You just need the right kind of rock, bash it a bit until you get a good shape, then boom, you've got something useful.

Huh? I find that a profoundly dubious supposition as well. All knappable stones - quartz, chert, obsidian, agate or jasper as well as flint - also double as striking stones. Sparks and fire, one figures, would naturally result as people learned the best way to strike a stone to get it to break. If they do not develop together, the delay between mastering flints and fire will not be a long one in any case. Moreover, knapping is NOT a simple process of bashing rocks until you achieve an edge; you must carefully and deliberately chip the stone with another stone implement, first developing what is known as a core, before refining it to its final shape. One wrong move can ruin a whole project. It requires patience, planning, and skill. Knapping itself requires and proves higher intelligence than any living animal but man possesses.

How exactly does one go about proving the assertion that these tools appreciably predated fire in human development? Who would even begin to imagine that we could somehow dig up and date the first fire circle or the first knapped tool? These things would be miniscule and scattered fragments left by hunter-gatherers in sheltered and hidden places subsequently swallowed up by undergrowth and soil buildup. We'd be lucky to even manage a vague approximation and would have to rely primarily on the leavings of much later settled peoples. I propose that a lack of evidence would make such a position impossible to prove, and I simply can't figure how we could come to any kind of conclusion about when Man began to build fires or knap stones.
Would you be able to direct me to any resources regarding this?

I do apologise if my tone is a little... Argumentative, here. It wasn't my intent.

Keep in mind, the martens are not a direct human analog. Predators already have fur to stay warm, they have digestive systems that can handle raw meat, they can see/hunt in the dark, and have teeth/claws that are naturally designed to take down their prey. Fire wouldn't have the same potential or immediate benefit to them that it might a hominid, so I'd argue that they wouldn't technologically develop along the same path as early humans. They may even develop a whole technique around knapping stones that minimizes sparks, since fire would be seen to posses more dangers than benefits.

Mmh, it might be then not so much that they haven't discovered fire, but that they haven't needed it? I mean, they might still use it to ward large predators or keep warm in the winter (where fur may not be adequate), but it's not as useful every day.
Now I imagine proper knapping doesn't actually produce many sparks but the learning process would produce many overly-forceful strikes and enable discovery of firestarting.

Maybe they know how to kindle fire but don't use it, while these herbivores rely on natural kindling. Maybe Rask has something to teach them after all!
Oh, but if that was the case, he wouldn't have had to carry the spark.

Another new page of this comic is always a cause for celebration, and brightens my day immensely.

Hey, isn't this supposed to be Page 139? It says Page 167.