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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!!!
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
We don't have an engrained preference for the skinny. The "preference for the skinny" is actually only an extremely recent cultural phenomenon.
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.
Maybe though, it's why we have an engrained preference for the skinny!
I doubt you mean skinny like the sacks of antlers they call super models, on the other end there are cultures that think people who have a body shape like a beach ball are ideal. There have been several studies I have seen that in general indicate that a more curvy body shape for women is preferred by men. There is something to be said about having some fat and still looking healthy that was probably selected for in prehistoric times since that would be a good indication that you could provide for your self and were of good health.
Time to offend someone
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
Leave Britney ALONE!!!!
rewriting history since 2109
I don't think that anthropology deals much with fossils anyways. I don't know how long it takes for remains to fossilize, but I'd be willing to bet that it takes more than the few hundred millenia associated with ancient human studies. Anthropology deals more with actual bones than fossils, though even then, wood is probably usually one of the first casualties of time.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
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.
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
No, to carve rock they used rock, metal tools were used for wood, ceramic, and other softer materials. The Inca did not use mortar, they didn't have the appropriate resources (there was almost no limestone in the entire Empire). The Maya used cement in some of their construction, as did the Aztecs. While the Inca stone cutting technique itself isn't complex (essentially beat a hard rock against a softer rock, repeat) the fitting technology was amazing. Go look at the larger rocks at Sacsayhuman, the largest single stones ever used in human construction. There is one on the lowest level that is on an outside corner which borders around a dozen stones, and you can't fit a knife blade between any of them (I checked). Downtown Cusco, the church of Santo Domingo has been destroyed several times by the earthquakes that shake the city up every couple of decades, while dust just rises out of the joints in the Inca temple of Qorikancha that it's built on, and the stones settle back into place. Puma Punko, a minor site, used a different quality of stonework, and probably a different builder since its foundation was not as good.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin