Posted on 04/23/2005 8:34:30 PM PDT by Lessismore
MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN-- Long before guns gave European explorers a decisive advantage over indigenous peoples, our ancestors had their own technological innovation that allowed them to dominate the Stone Age competition: the projectile point, launched from bows or spear throwers. Paleolithic hunters shooting spears or arrows tipped with these small stone points could stay at a safe distance while hunting a wide assortment of prey--or other humans, says archaeologist John Shea of Stony Brook University in New York. Projectile launchers might even be the key to modern humans' triumph when they entered the Neandertal territory of Europe about 40,000 years ago, Shea proposed in his talk. Neandertals lacked projectiles until it was too late, and they could heft their heavier spears only as far as they could throw them. "Projectile points were such an important invention, like gunpowder, that it would have given the bearers a huge advantage," says archaeologist Alison Brooks of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
In two separate studies, Shea and Brooks showed that modern humans were using lightweight points associated with projectile launchers by 40,000 years ago. Shea and Brooks both think these new weapons were invented first in Africa, although they disagree about the timing. They agree that modern humans had a technological advantage when they left Africa and spread around the globe. "These lightweight points show up more than 50,000 years ago in Africa," says Stan Ambrose of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who heard Shea's talk. "They may have helped modern humans get out of Africa."
The challenge in pinpointing when projectiles were invented is that few of the launchers themselves survive, because they were made of materials that disintegrate over time. The oldest known bow is only 11,000 years old, and the oldest knownspear thrower is about 18,000 years old, but archaeologists suspect that the technology is much older. So they try to distinguish projectile points from those used on the tips of hand-thrown spears. One criterion is size: Projectile points must be small and light to soar fast enough to kill. "You wouldn't go up to a Cape buffalo with those tiny points on a thrusting spear," says Brooks.
Shea and Brooks each surveyed points from around the world, setting an upper limit on the size and weight of points considered projectiles. Shea set an upper limit on cross sections at the tip, whereas Brooks set a limit on weight. Shea found that projectile points were widespread by 40,000 years ago; earlier points didn't meet his criteria. He proposed that the points were developed for warfare and may have hastened the extinction of Neandertals.
Brooks found that points from 50,000 to 90,000 years ago in three regions of Africa met her criteria. She noted that there was a "grammar and an order" to assembling these tools--one that required extensive social networks in order to exchange technology and specialized materials. She thinks that projectiles made modern humans more efficient hunters who could shoot small game and live in varied terrain. "They didn't have to kill [Neandertals]," says Brooks. "They just had to outcompete them."
ping
Naw, the Neandertals simply lost all the flamewars with those smartypants humans. There is only so much you can do with "ooga-ooga-ooga".
Didn't they come out of San Francisco?
Either that, or they were the most unfortunately named of the early hominids. ;-)
Hehe - "Homo Erectus"
Didn't they come out of San Francisco?
Either that, or they were the most unfortunately named of the early hominids. ;-)
Is this a Jm J. Bullock thread ?
WOMERA Bump...
Thanks. We are Neanderthals.
LOL!
(Those four years earning my B.A. in Anthropology were not wasted . . . )
Back in the day, there were efforts to ban spears, spearheaded mostly by bands of man-hating cavewomen who dressed manly and looked like Fred Flintstone. Fortunately there were Neanderthals with clearer heads who prevailed with a variation upon the age-old argument "If spears are outlawed, only outlaws will have spears."
Atlatl is the Nahuatl word, and womera is the Aboriginal word for a spear thrower...
However, your picture posting needs work...
I don't se the point of this piece except for the afrocentrism. There's no science at all here.
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Ah, but which came first: projectiles, or vomiting?