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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
That might be the sort of thing they taught you in high school decades ago when we were kids, but the definition of species has had to be revised considerably since then. It is a murky concept. See Ring Species for an example of how complex it can get.
Mostly, homo sapiens and neanderthals did not interbreed, just sometimes.
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.
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.
It is a murky concept.
So his definition is as good as yours. Species are a matter of perception (like planets, dwarf planets, satellites, quasi-satellites).
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).
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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.
The fact that we interbred with them means they were the same species as us
That might be the sort of thing they taught you in high school decades ago when we were kids, but the definition of species has had to be revised considerably since then. It is a murky concept. See Ring Species for an example of how complex it can get.
Mostly, homo sapiens and neanderthals did not interbreed, just sometimes.
Last time I checked there was no consistent universally accepted definition of what constitutes a 'species'. Many Geneticists for example are even of the opinion that there is no genetic evidence for concept of 'races' in humans, which is another categorisation that has never been clearly defined. From the point of view of genetics, 'race' is little more than an artificial construct that humans have created to make each others lives more complicated and generally more miserable than they have to be.
And it would not cover quite common species like the ordinary dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), which has a surprisingly complex way to create offspring. There are three different genetic make-ups of dandelion: diploid, triploid and tetraploid, which can't easily crossbreed. From the outside, they all look identical, just the number of chromosomes they have in their nuclei changes. Two diploid parents create tetraploid offspring. A diploid and a tetraploid dandelion create triploid offspring. Triploid dandelions are infertile, but can create clones of themselves. Tetraploid dandelion can't fertilize another tetraploid dandelion, only diploids. So the normal way is that diploids create tetraploids, and then the diploids and the tetraploids create triploids, which are infertile, but create clones. And how does the circle close? The cloning is not perfect, and often, after cloning, one chromosome is missing, so with time, the triploid chromosome set becomes more and more diploid. With a chromosome set mainly but not necessarily completely diploid, dandelion starts to behave like a perfect diploid, crossfertilizing other diploid and tetraploid dandelion again.
If you look at the "fertile offspring" definition of species, common dandelion wouldn't be a single species, but rather each individual plant would be a species of its own, as it is either infertile (triploids), can't create any offspring with individuals of the same genetic make-up (tetraploids), can't create fertile offspring (diploid x tetraploid) or can't create offspring of similar genetic make-up (diploid x diploid).
As the 1999 article Die Recken von Schöningen – 400 000 Jahre Jagd mit dem Speer discusses, throwing spears matters, animals will flee at a certain distance of a perceived threat. For most animals this is less than 30 m. The Schöningen spears make practical hunting weapons up to about 30 m distance.
The 1999 article also argues that in some situations throwing spears is more effective than using a bow: Animals learn to associate the characteristic noise from firing an arrow from a bow with danger; triggering a flight reflex that makes them start to move while the arrow is still in flight. This can be a problem when hunting with bows. On the other hand, there is no such noise when throwing spears
Sure, like wolves and coyotes. The problem the hybrids face is that there is typically no space in the environment for them. Both wolves and coyotes have evolved to be optimally suited for their environment and there is no space in between -- the hybrids are killed off. The only exception to this rule is when humans get involved. Where humans killed off the wolves in eastern Canada, hybrids are now well established.
"Only white supremacists can destroy humanity if left unchecked"
Bullshit. Any color of people can destroy the biosphere just by continuing to make shit we don't need. Speaking of which, noticed how desperate Apple is getting lately? They have pounded YouTube full of commercials for their garbage. All this crap nobody wants is destroying our home, I can't even enjoy Apple's failing because I know it's built on destruction.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Then we have the case of lion and tiger. Here, it gets really complicated. A crossbred of a male tiger and a lioness is usually called a liger. While male ligers are infertile, female ligers are fertile. If you cross a female liger with a male lion, you get something called a li-liger (Panthera leo x (leo x tigris)). And li-liger are fertile, both males and females, and can interbreed. Are tiger and lion the same species, as you can create hybrids that are fertile?