Slashdot Mirror
Neanderthals Were Likely Able To Hunt Over Significant Distances With Spears, Study Finds (nature.com)
dryriver writes: In the past, Neanderthal humans were believed to be largely close-distance hunters. A new paper in the journal Nature, based on actual outdoor tests with multiple test subjects throwing two wooden spears closely mimicking ancient spears found in various places at a target, surmises that spear throwing Neanderthals may in fact have been able to kill animals at distances of 60 feet or even greater. The authors found that targeting a wooden spear accurately at that distance takes skill, and even worked out the impact velocity of Neanderthal spears at such a distance. Nevertheless, Neanderthals with sufficient practice in spear throwing may very well have been capable of killing at distances far greater than previously thought. This changes the assumption that Neanderthals needed to get very close to animals in order to have a chance of killing them.
The fact that we interbred with them means they were the same species as us whatever others may say, just a different race who happened to be somewhat stronger and just as intelligent.
and neanderthals are universally considered smarter.
This is probably why very few wild animals will come within 60 feet of a person...
(excluding urban, pet, farm, and zoo animals obviously)
The more we learn about Neanderthals, the less inferior they seem compared to other hominids.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Right on. I mean, Neandies are so 1990s.
Proposals that features of the upper limbs of different species of Homo indicate that throwing only comes into play with H. sapiens are hampered by multiple issues. These include small sample sizes, human variation in populations, evidence that humeral robusticity and shape may not correlate with strains in weapon use, and a lack of clarity whether any single activity contributes to or offsets bone remodeling or robusticity. Others argue for an earlier emergence of throwing, showing that features necessary for accurate and powerful throwing are evidenced in H. erectus fossils. A recent find of an early Neanderthal dating to MIS 7 from Tourville-la-Rivière shows skeletal trauma consistent with repeated throwing, supporting the hypothesis that they were capable and frequent throwers.
I'm curious what the result of the debate will be.
I can attest to this. In high school, we got a couple of lessons in throwing javelins. The protocol was not well established, because a girl threw a javelin when someone else went to pick up theirs. Although the javelins were blunted, it got stuck in the calve muscles of their left leg. The wound was cleaned and the "victim" appeared in class again after a couple of days. This was over a distance of, say, ten meters (32 feet).
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
In the past, Neanderthal humans were believed to be largely close-distance hunters. A new paper in the journal Nature, based on actual outdoor tests with multiple test subjects throwing two wooden spears closely mimicking ancient spears found in various places at a target, surmises that spear throwing Neanderthals may in fact have been able to kill animals at distances of 60 feet or even greater. The authors found that targeting a wooden spear accurately at that distance takes skill, and even worked out the impact velocity of Neanderthal spears at such a distance. Nevertheless, Neanderthals with sufficient practice in spear throwing may very well have been capable of killing at distances far greater than previously thought. This changes the assumption that Neanderthals needed to get very close to animals in order to have a chance of killing them.
I've always wondered where this myth came from that Neanderthals were unable to throw their spears any significant distance and needed to get up close and personal to get a kill. There was even this crazy hypothesis for a while that Neanderthals simply couldn't throw spears because of the structure of their shoulder bones. During tests with the Schöningens spears that German archaeologists conducted 20 years ago they found that modern athletes could throw replicas of the Schöningen spears up to 70 meters. A skilled spear man can hit something the size of the heart/lung area of a deer for example at a third and up to half that range. Modern day javelin throwers can hit a coconut at 20 meters, I'd expect palaeolithic hunters to be far more skilled. The Shöningen spears are over 300.000 years old and were already quite cleverly optimised for throwing and would have been made by proto-Neanderthals. The Schöningen find pretty much destroyed the idea that humans were basically carrion eaters until very recently in their history and only used spears along with fire to chase predators off their kills. They probably did that as well but they mostly seem to have been active hunters from very early on. Nevertheless there are still people sticking to the carrion eater theory.
> Neanderthals Were Likely Able To Hunt Over Significant Distances With Spears
Here is a bit of related reading from year 2013's Best of Slashdot:
https://science.slashdot.org/story/13/03/13/1247255/manga-girls-beware-extra-large-eyes-caused-neanderthals-demise
Manga Girls Beware: Extra Large Eyes Caused Neanderthal's Demise
[BTW: the captcha for this comment is "unarmed"... Good bot AI-chan!]
I seems lost in this is the fact that you don't have to throw a spear to use it to hunt; any animal that will charge a hunter can be taken down with a firmly planted spear.... well... any animal a thrown spear can take down. Really big animals would take a team effort.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Why do they even need research for this? Javelin throw can reach over 100m. Even for Neanderthals this shouldn't have been much of an issue, perhaps even greater distances given their greater physical prowess over HS and believe me, you'll acquire the skill if you need it to survive, I've seen natives achieving better results at bow fishing with radically less "technologically advanced" tools just because of the combination of constant practice and the sheer fact that you need to eat every day.
I wonder why this study is considered big news now. It confirms the findings of German scientists from the late 90s (see e.g. Die Recken von Schöningen – 400 000 Jahre Jagd mit dem Speer, more publications referenced in the German Wikipedia and the new article in Nature). The design of the experiments seems similar. They even chose the very same spear (Schöningen 2) to base their replicas on.
Replicating earlier results is important and useful. Still I don't get why the results are reported by the media as if they were a surprise.
...ever
Here's an interesting YouTube video that shows combat between swords and spears: Spears are better than swords: scientific proof
Killing prey at up to 60 feet.... So easy a caveman can do it.
Um, spear throwing sticks have existed for a very very long time, and precede humans leaving Africa, so I don't see why Neanderthals couldn't have them too.
With those you get a very long range.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
At least none of them could breed with Patrick Mahomes, could have killed anything.
I have made and thrown throwing spears... They are a significant departure from a thrusting spear. I can honestly tell you that I have hit a running man in the head, when I was a teen, at about 60 yards. It brought him down. Didn't kill him, but did cause him to roll around on the ground holding the wound. Had it been a smaller critter, I would have aimed for the body, then it may have killed. So, yeah, duh. When your weapon is what keeps you fed, you become proficient in its use!
"Governments have been dominated by the corporate entities and citizens have ceased to matter in public policy" true in
If SCIENCE proves whites were the first to put bones through noses, I will lose my shit.
You get better if you have enough practice? What a joke!
Neanderthals may in fact have been able to kill animals at distances of 60 feet or even greater.
Neanderthals devolved into liberal democrats who, sadly, are able to kill freedom at distances up to the width of the U.S.