Neanderthals invented their own bone weapon technology by 80,000 years ago
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Thanks Kiona, this was a great piece. Brings me back to the old days, shovelbumming for $100/week at various archaeo and paleo digs put on by some of the universities near me (at the time) in Alabama!
Do we know whether the projectile this PPK would have been attached to was more likely to be a hand-thrown javelin, or an atlatl dart? (I know atlatls have generally been understood to have been introduced by homo sap about 60,000 years later than this, but... obviously we didn't already have everything right, hence this article
)
Do we know whether the projectile this PPK would have been attached to was more likely to be a hand-thrown javelin, or an atlatl dart? (I know atlatls have generally been understood to have been introduced by homo sap about 60,000 years later than this, but... obviously we didn't already have everything right, hence this article
)
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Granted, that's kind of like kicking the slow kid in the class, but in the game of survival, it's generally kick or be kicked. We're here. They're not (except, of course, through whatever legacy they left in our DNA, which likely isn't as benevolent as it sounds).
After all, evolution isn't known for its gentle approach to extinction.
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I'm just excited because even a handful of years ago the conventional picture was that Neanderrthals didn't use projectiles at all, relying instead on thrusting spears.Thanks Kiona, this was a great piece. Brings me back to the old days, shovelbumming for $100/week at various archaeo and paleo digs put on by some of the universities near me (at the time) in Alabama!
Do we know whether the projectile this PPK would have been attached to was more likely to be a hand-thrown javelin, or an atlatl dart? (I know atlatls have generally been understood to have been introduced by homo sap about 60,000 years later than this, but... obviously we didn't already have everything right, hence this article
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It's being described as a spear tip. I haven't noticed any mention of evidence that said "spear" was thrown rather than thrust...
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ReadandShare
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
My hunch is that when Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals encountered, fought, played and made love... they likely saw themselves as 'the same kind of animals' - unlike how gorillas or chimps might be viewed as different?
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Well, we are way more closely related to Neanderthals than Chimps and gorillas are to each other. They aren't even in the same genus.
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They call it a "bone-tipped hunting projectile," which specifically means it was presumably a thrown or otherwise launched weapon. I can't see the full paper but they do use that term in the abstract.
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So what major advances have modern humans introduced into bone-tipped hunting weapons?Golovanova and colleagues said:
When you say modern, are you referring to ca. 2010 or a somewhat less modern modern (eg. 1962)?
Kiona N. Smith said:
___
Also, Kionna, I like your writing style. I apologise again about the shoe joke on your other article.
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Human evolution is deeply marked by the fact tools and weapons are coeval.
Whole nother evolutionary track happens if that doesn't. We aren't predators.
Whole nother evolutionary track happens if that doesn't. We aren't predators.
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"Ugg, Homo Trumpus over there say homo no longer export ultra bone shaping technology to us. what we do?"No patents to boot.
"No worry, Urk, we put best Neanderthal brains onto it, Wa and Wei. Pretty soon we get same or better technology. Hit bison from far off."
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In case you're not joking, "modern humans" refers to "anatomically modern humans," our species and/or subspecies depending on who you ask. We go back sometime between 1 million and 200,000 years, and started filtering into Europe about 55-60,000 years ago.
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If you think of the Chicxulub ash cloud like a giant, atmosphere-spanning hug then evolution was a compassionate dino killer.
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"Modern humans" in an archaeological sense refers to Cro-Magnon man (and contemporaries) and everybody afterward. Essentially, homo sapiens for the last 60,000 years or so.
I'm not sure how serious you are about wanting sapiens-specific advances in bone-tipped hunting weapons, but the invention of the socketed point certainly qualifies. I'm not sure when they were introduced in the rest of the world, but in my own North American home continent, the socketed bone point appeared in the record around 11,000 years ago--long after the Neanderthals and other non-sapiens hominids were gone.
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I usually see estimates more like 60K BCE to 100K BCE for the earliest "modern humans." But that kind of has to do with what, precisely, you mean by "modern."
Granted, this has as much to do with the level of technology and behavioral patterns exhibited by populations as it does with anything else--but something happened at some point between roughly 60K-100K BCE that caused an explosion of new technology, language, and lifestyles.
To the best of my understanding, there's not much obvious anatomical difference between Cro-Magnon man at around 60K BCE and the earliest homo sapiens at around 300K BCE, but the more gracile (lightly built) skeletal construction of those fully anatomically modern humans (again, at somewhere between around 60K to 100K BCE) is frequently theorized to be a major factor in the sudden explosion of increased cooperation and transportation of resources from one area to another.
It's worth noting that even Homo Neanderthalensis would absolutely, 100% pass for normal everyday human today, if dressed up in modern clothes. We can't know for certain whether physiological differences would have given them a weird accent, or even possibly made the use of our particular language patterns difficult or impossible. But it seems pretty unlikely--we already know we interbred with them, and while modern humans have been documented using orangutans as sex workers, that's VERY unusual behavior, and it seems unlikely that early humans would have interbred with Neanderthals frequently enough to leave much of a genetic record if the populations were that different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human
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FWIW, that was pretty hotly debated for a very long time, you just kinda had to be inside the community to know there was a debate. If you never dipped your toe much further than an encyclopedia article or a school textbook, you wouldn't have known about it.
See also: Tyrannosaurus Rex not walking upright and dragging its tail behind it like a tripod. Most people didn't really get a handle on that until Jurassic Park, but a lot of us had known there were competing and hotly contested theories about that (and about whether sauropods were confined for life to wading through swamps) for decades prior.
I'm sure there are hotly contested debates now that I don't know the first damn thing about, though; I haven't been able to maintain the same kind of investment in archaeology and paleontology for the last 25 years as I managed for my first 25.
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If we accept the postulate that Chixculub was the cause of that mass extinction event, I might argue that "evolution" didn't kill off the dinosaurs at all; "evolution" gradually changed the survivors into species better adapted to their conditions (and in most cases, more adaptable in general).
If you buy all of that, then evolution genuinely is a gentle, compassionate force...
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From the article: "...archaeologists made some bone-tipped spears and threw them at things to see what would happen,” which is an excellent approach to science)." I get the point. How about making some of these bone-tipped spears with tips about the same size as this one, and seeing what kind of animal (carcass) they're capable of penetrating? From the description, it sounds like this might have been intended for small animals, like rabbit sized.
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9cm is long enough to skewer a rabbit all the way through, let alone kill it. The point itself would be enough for anything up to the size of a modern white-tailed deer IMO; the real differentiator would be what the rest of the projectile looked like (and weighed).
If you chucked this point on the end of a javelin at a rabbit, you'd basically be expecting an instant kill if you managed to hit it at all. If you chucked it at something the size of a white-tailed deer or a wolf, you'd be expecting a kill if you got a clean, solid hit, or a nasty wound that slows them down and possibly bleeds them out with a more awkward hit. For reference, this Angostura point is only 2cm longer, and points like it were used to hunt bison!
Granted, the Angostura point is chert (stone), not bone... and when it comes to hunting bison with hand-thrown projectiles, it's not ever a solo hunting task. But this illustrates what I was saying about it being as much about the missile itself as the point, when it comes to the size of game you're hunting. The point does the initial penetration to transfer the kinetic energy of the weapon to the vulnerable inside of the target rather than dissipating that energy on the much tougher outside of the target, but the mass of the projectile itself does more to determine how much kinetic energy there is to injure the target with.
It's probably worth noting, btw, that hominds also fall into the category of "about the same size as a white-tailed deer or a wolf."
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The way I read this, is that the point by itself wasn't a good close-quarters weapon (i.e. if wielded like a bone axe or dagger.) But bound to a long stick, forming the tip of a spear, it could be used to strike from a distance - which is the purpose of all spear-like weapons.
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Ties into the theory that the differentiator was more likely our immune systems than our brains. Or if the brain was involved, lower sociability leading to smaller groups, and thus less MHC diversity.
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"Projectile" specifically means launched through the air and not held in the hand.
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Sorry, no. It's as thin and light as it is because it needs to not be so point-heavy as to screw up a throw.
Thrusting weapons have heavier points, because heavier points are both easier to make and more durable. Essentially, the only reason you'd make a point light enough to be a projectile point, is if you want it to be a projectile point.
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I am a bit of a stick in the mud with respect to Neanderthals: many of these studies simply ignore the possibility that these were made by modern humans who didn't end up contributing to the Eurasian gene pool - e.g. an example of "Neanderthal" ochre art near Gibraltar that is contemporaneous with modern humans in North Africa, who were known to make ochre drawings. Surely the more likely explanation is modern humans sailed across the strait. But this possibility was never considered in the paper.
The mistake the papers always seem to make is taking 50,000BCE Neanderthal displacement as the first date of human presence, without considering that smaller groups of modern humans might have been exploring Eurasia. There is an especially egregious study from 2013 claiming that 51,000BCE bone tools must have been made by Neanderthals and that Neanderthals must have taught modern humans (which ignores a ton of evidence in Southern Africa suggesting these tolls were understood by modern humans for much longer).
AFAICY my grumpiness applies to this too. There were modern humans in the Levant 100,000 years ago, it is wholly plausible that a small expedition made it up to the Caucasus and took up residence in the same cave as Neanderthals. It actually seems more likely that a modern human nomads built these tools vs a Neanderthal genius who didn't pass on the knowledge. Of course I could be wrong! It's the undeserved confidence that bothers me. If these tools were from 150,000 years ago then I would agree whole-heartedly. 80,000 is much more sketchy.
The mistake the papers always seem to make is taking 50,000BCE Neanderthal displacement as the first date of human presence, without considering that smaller groups of modern humans might have been exploring Eurasia. There is an especially egregious study from 2013 claiming that 51,000BCE bone tools must have been made by Neanderthals and that Neanderthals must have taught modern humans (which ignores a ton of evidence in Southern Africa suggesting these tolls were understood by modern humans for much longer).
AFAICY my grumpiness applies to this too. There were modern humans in the Levant 100,000 years ago, it is wholly plausible that a small expedition made it up to the Caucasus and took up residence in the same cave as Neanderthals. It actually seems more likely that a modern human nomads built these tools vs a Neanderthal genius who didn't pass on the knowledge. Of course I could be wrong! It's the undeserved confidence that bothers me. If these tools were from 150,000 years ago then I would agree whole-heartedly. 80,000 is much more sketchy.
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It's plausible it was sapiens it is equally pausible it was denisova or even some species we have not seen in Europe. As they say absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The much more likely explanation of neandertalensis seems rather strongly suggested considering finding their evidence in the same (admittedly large) time frame.
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Such an interesting thought to me that they were much more intelligent and like us than the term "neanderthal" usually gave them credit for if you called someone one. Had they met more fortuitous times climate wise, had it been us that was wiped out as we came very close to getting down to a few thousand members of the homo sapien species, I wonder what the world would look like now.
Some argue that their technology level stayed the same for longer than ours and that was part of it, but we also mucked around for tens of thousands of years at a time before punctuated bursts in our technology that then flattened for another many thousands of years, maybe they just had to hit such a bump. And real technology-technology only came about in the last several hundreds of years, so just...Who knows, if they made it to now as the sole intelligent humanoid.
Equally interesting is the "ghost hominids" that we know about from our own DNA but have not found remains for yet - or have we, somewhere in art or tools like this, that we never found fossils to join them with?
Some argue that their technology level stayed the same for longer than ours and that was part of it, but we also mucked around for tens of thousands of years at a time before punctuated bursts in our technology that then flattened for another many thousands of years, maybe they just had to hit such a bump. And real technology-technology only came about in the last several hundreds of years, so just...Who knows, if they made it to now as the sole intelligent humanoid.
Equally interesting is the "ghost hominids" that we know about from our own DNA but have not found remains for yet - or have we, somewhere in art or tools like this, that we never found fossils to join them with?
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I greatly appreciate your contributions to this thread. That having been said, there are some things I'd rather not have lodged in my brain.
Nonetheless, given we're talking about modern human males, there's probably not much in the animal kingdom that's off limits for certain members [sic] of the species.
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I would love for that to be true (and it probably was for some), but even today human racists refuse to believe other humans from a different continent are 'the same kind of animals'. shrug
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Shocker: species very, very, very, very close to us on the evolutionary family tree can do most (not all, but most) of what we can do.
Psst: there were surely some things they could do better than us. Yes, it's true.
Psst: there were surely some things they could do better than us. Yes, it's true.
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Homo sapiens: stanning short kings since 100,000 BP
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