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Narrowing Down When Humans Began Hurling Spears
sciencehabit writes "Archaeologists have long debated when early humans began hurling stone-tipped spears and darts at large prey. By throwing a spear, instead of thrusting it, humans could hunt buffalo and other dangerous game from a safe distance, with less risk of a goring or mauling. But direct evidence of this hunting technique in early sites has been lacking. A new study of impact marks on the bones of ancient prey shows that such sophisticated killing techniques go back at least 90,000 years ago in Africa and offers a new method of determining how prehistoric hunters made their kills."
...rocks with rules scratched into them regarding Spear Control.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'll bet if we could travel back in time and watch these creatures innovate we would have far more respect for their ingenuity in their time.
I'll bet they came up with solutions we wouldn't think of that were lost to time.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Archaeologists also found evidence that the main damage was on creatures skulls , which led them to the conclusion: Aimbot!!!
So, when I read the title, somehow I thought the point was going to be that once we started throwing spears at one another the race got narrower to be less of a target.
Interesting angle, but it would be hard to prove from fossil records. Maybe though, it's why we have an engrained preference for the skinny! Our progeny will be a poorer target!
I am reminded of the Thagomizer.
As dangerous as hunting large prey was, I imagine it did not take long to go from attaching a sharp rock to the end of a long stick, to throwing the long stick. When facing "the Thagomizer" the mental leap probably occurred in about a minute :-)
Proverbs 21:19
I believe it was about third grade
But direct evidence of this hunting technique in early sites has been lacking.
When someone invents the time machine, we'll know for sure!
It is said it could cleanly cut through a falling silk scarf.
I thought at first that the manufacturing process was lost because it was kept a trade secret. However, this paper finds that the superior properties of the steel come from impurities that were present in the original iron mine. When iron from a different mine used used, the steelsmiths were unable to reproduce the original's properties. Within a generation, production was entirely abandoned.
Og comes up with a superior spear, shares it with rest of tribe ("its open source") but gets taken to court for because he was not licensed. Og documents his experience (drawings in a cave) but someone yells copyright infringement and drawings are erased.
mfwright@batnet.com
I believe we started hunting *with* spears.
Early spears were made of all wood. Wood does not fossilize by itself. Direct evidence is therefore few and far between. Not all early bands and tribes recorded on rock and even amongst those that did, few of those sites are preserved.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
... When i started hurling about a Spears....
Perhaps they mean "Hurtling"?
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The OP was trying to make a joke, but on Slashdot one gets a lot of corrections.
the first politician appeared in our history then that might be a good place to start.
Sigmund Freud said, "The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization."
Sorry, I forgot there are ads on the Web; I use Lynx.
Is there any evidence that there was any delay at all?
Seems to me once you have the intelligence to make and use a spear, it ill only be days at most before you're gonna try throwing it, at least partly because throwing whatever you have in your hand is what you would automatically do if you've got some pissed-off large animal (such as one thats just been prodded with a pointy stick) chasing you.
I hate to break this to you but people had very distinct eating habits based on where they lived and what season it was.
Most hunter gatherer's ate whatever they could easily collect. That goes for the ones that still exist today. It boiled down to what was least amount of effort.
Most of that time that was nuts, berries, roots, just about anything that a people could recognize as not gonna kill you off.
In colder regions though, people needed lots of fat to survive.
Early humans were not significantly stupider than us modern humans. They were pretty creative in how they solved their problems, and it was their quick thinking that got humanity to the point where we had enough free time to figure out later innovations like bronze, plaster, and agriculture.
A great example of this: They figured out the basic concept of cooking. Apes don't do that, and it allowed humans to eat things that other animals couldn't eat, and meant that humans were far less likely to get sick from what they ate. And while it seems like an obvious thing now, it wasn't at all obvious 125,000 years ago: You first had to get the idea of controlling and later building fires, then the idea of trying to use that fire to make plants you couldn't eat into plants you could eat (perhaps combining them with water), and the idea of heating meat over the fire, and observing that if you cooked your food before eating it you were less likely to get sick.
I am officially gone from
In a related note it was there is an recorded instance of Boreopithecus redmondonis that hurled chairs.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Now that requires our full scientific analysis.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Now I can upgrade the Man v. Neanderthal first-person stabber that I've been working on to a first-person thrower.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Firstly they used stone, bronze and copper tool (copper hardened thru another element , can't recall what it was maybe nitrite). Secondely they used mortar for some architecture too. Thirdly, you can very well see the seams at many of the building and even see thru. Heck even puma punku you can see the place between the stone, the stones marking, and it isn't even 90Â.
I am not saying that to lower the feat of architecture, just that the technic used there aren't as advanced as you might think for 600 AD for example and there is a lot of mythic which is not warranted (only stone tool / blade of grass) (by 300 AD in europe people were already building churchs in complex architecture with cut stone and extants like : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panagia_Ekatontapiliani)
That said your main point on stone being an incredible building construct tool stand.
How many years earlier did humans just use pointed sticks. The technology to sharpen a stick to a point is a lot simpler than a stone point. I believe humans started to stand on two feet just to be able to carry a long pointed stick to use for defense and attack.
We're adapted for persistance hunting. Spears were probably used to safely finish off a dying animal laying on its side suffering a heat stroke. It's not that early humans couldn't accurately throw a spear, it was just pointless. Hiding behind a bush and hurling a spear is probably a regional hunting technique.
I remember reading somewhere that some anthropologists narrowed down the inventions of the club when skulls starting thickening :)
No, they were not vegetarians. We have all sorts of archaeological evidence showing early man ate animals. The fact that most other primates don't is irrelevant.
That's when the first spear was used.
Someone had to start it up.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
No, they were not vegetarians. We have all sorts of archaeological evidence showing early man ate animals. The fact that most other primates don't is irrelevant.
Yeah chimps TOTALLY don't eat meat, no meat at all. Thats indisputable.
Oh wait... http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~stanford/chimphunt.html
Neither do orangutan.
Oh wait... http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21364-vegetarian-orangutans-eat-worlds-cutest-animal.html
And surely not gorillas.
Oh wait... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100305-first-proof-gorillas-eat-monkeys-mammals-feces-dna/
And of course gibbons don't eat meat. Being omnivores.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
They tried to kill it, but then the beast got passed them. One of the hunter, Grok, we will call him, got pissed, god mad, didn't understand why life was so fucked up, and threw his spear at the beast. He scores a hit! Does it bring the best down? Who knows, but what we do know is the viral nature of human beans, and suddenly, everyone was getting frustrated and throwing shit around.
Be seeing you...
Yes, I know there are other primates that eat meat.
Brittany Spears
Yes, I know there are other primates that eat meat.
Lots of other primates eat meat. It seems to be the trend more than the exception.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Tell me more about big spears embedded in wild asses?
they found out throwing flowers at a sabre tooth tiger does nothing but piss it off. Ah humans, we evolve out of epic failure.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
It depends on what you mean by meat. While most primates are omnivores, the bulk of them only make that category by eating insects and grubs. While it's true insects and grubs are technically animals, that's not what most people think when they say "animal". The article the AC linked makes the point that a real "paleolithic diet" would be mostly vegetarian because our guts are derived from other primates which are mostly vegetarian.
In any event, my point was that he's wrong. Our ancestors were not vegetarians.
It depends on what you mean by meat. While most primates are omnivores, the bulk of them only make that category by eating insects and grubs. While it's true insects and grubs are technically animals, that's not what most people think when they say "animal". The article the AC linked makes the point that a real "paleolithic diet" would be mostly vegetarian because our guts are derived from other primates which are mostly vegetarian.
In any event, my point was that he's wrong. Our ancestors were not vegetarians.
And you are dead right. But our closest relatives among primates, gorillas, chimps, orangutan and (to a less closely related extent) gibbons, all eat actual meat, not just insects and grubs. So even if the great bulk of primatekind were totally vegan our closest relatives are not and that kind of closes the argument.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.