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Surgery isn't necessarily required to remove frostbitten fingers. They often auto amputate if you just leave them alone. In fact the modern management is not to immediately amputate but to treat conservatively, wait and only use surgery when absolutely necessary, e.g if severe infection occurs.

As someone studying experimental archaeology who also happens to be a finger amputee (be careful with knives kids!), I'm tempted to have a go recreating these paintings and comparing what folding fingers looks like compared to a stump

I like the theory that different painters curled up different fingers as a kind of signature, perhaps with their palm up. "Ooh, look, my grandfather Tork painted that!"

“The only thing worse than losing a finger is having an unsecured Internet connection.” - Stefan Milo 😂

14:55 "How can we test if these people truly cut their fingers off?" Cut to Stefan holding a rock in the forest "We gotta give it a go"... OMG!! my man is cutting off a finger for the love of science! What a champ!

I spent some time in the Brazilian desert when I was a young woman. The main crop there was manioc, and it was processed by hand by the women who lived in the villages. They used machetes, and it was common for them to slip and cut their fingers. There was no modern healthcare available there, it was so isolated. So they often got infections and lost their fingers. I was shocked at how many of these women were missing fingers; it seemed that almost all of them had at least a partial amputation.

So when I saw this video I had to wonder; how often did these people cut themselves, especially given that they were making and using super sharp flint tools? How often did they lose fingers to infection? It's worth considering.

In the case of stenciling, or negative handprints like you were attempting, they found in Chauvet cave that a powder was blown through a hollow tube; probably something like a hollow bone. I can imagine the artist priming the tool by pushing it into a quantity of pigment, then blowing it at the hand like with a blow gun. Rinse and repeat until it's done.

Can I just, after years of watching you. Tell you how great your visuals have been. From lighting to sets. Color grading etc. You keep improving and changing every single video. Always trying something different. It's a treat on it's own.

Petition to have a series where Stefan puts ancient things in his mouth

this is far more entertaining then it has any right to be - long live stefan!

Check out old-time loggers and cowboys, folks that work with rope under pressure. They're all missing fingers. It's not unreasonable that ancient humans knew how to make rope (the rope making tools are in the archeological record). A rope under tension is an excellent finger-snipping tool.

BBC has a clip of a french archeologist who knows how to do this. He did it with many, many small bursts. According to him you can see the technique in the prints

1:45 I feel like, in Europe, during the ice age, we have to consider frostbite as the primary factor (You can't knap tools with big fur mittens on).
But I've also long believed that sophisticated and complex language may have existed before we had speech - as sign language.
It's harder for me to wrap my head around deliberate amputation in a population that relies so heavily on tool -making and hunting - seems disadvantageous.

I haven't watched the fully video yet but frostbite is interesting. Often times when people get badly frost bitten, doctors will have the patient keep the dead appendages on for some time. This is done because even if it doesn't look like it can be saved at first, given a few months, there may be flesh that heals. Thus, it can help with having less of you amputated.
There is also the concept of dry vs wet rot. If you have dry rot, the appendage can be left alone and can eventually fall off itself without pain. So, depending on how these people were frost bitten, they may not have needed to really amputate. Generally needing to intervene happens if the skin cuts off in like the middle of the bone/bone necrosis, as you generally want skin to cover your bones!

If you put the back of your hand against the wall instead of the palm it is easier to imagine the finger bending method

@8:04 frostbite usually spares the thumb because people wrap it inside their other fingers when they get cold. loss of the lesser digits without involvement of the thumb is a typical pattern for frostbite

Well I’m grateful for the attempted recreation, truly a man of the people

@11:30 our guide at carnarvon was explaining how some of the stencils and art were composites. You can blow the pigment to create the image pieces at a time. They didn't have to be done by one hand at once.

10:50 Stefan, the fact that I can make that hand gesture and that this video already inspired me to make some experimental archeology type recreations of this hand print art is only making me double down on my decision