Ancient Wooden Weapons Show Our Ancestors Were Organized And Creative Hunters
300,000-year-old throwing sticks made with stones breaking bones
“The appearance of weaponry — technology designed to kill — is a critical but poorly established threshold in human evolution…representing…changes in ecology, cognition, language, and social behaviors. While the earliest weapons are often considered to be hand-held…the subsequent appearance of distance weapons is a crucial development.”
— Milks, A., Parker, D. & Pope, M. External ballistics of Pleistocene hand-thrown spears: experimental performance data and implications for human evolution. Sci Rep 9, 820 (2019).
The story of humanity is like a script that’s partially written. We know the ultimate start: primate. However, there are so many chapters missing in between the leap from here to the present homo sapiens which dominate the Earth.
For instance, what subtle change in the plot started the story diverging from primate to humanity?
In his book The Ape That Understood The Universe, Professor Steve Steward-Williams calls humans the “throwing ape,” claiming the ability to throw is a prime skill that creates this separation.
But it goes beyond the act itself. Throwing requires projectiles, training, and some semblance of organization or creativity to put the two together as an effective skill. For humans, this began long ago.
In Schöningen, Germany well preserved spears were found, as well as throwing sticks, which are thought to be three hundred thousand years old. This challenges the traditional view of our long distant ancestors as ignorant “cavemen.” Namely, they were adept hunters, skilled wood workers, and capable throwers well back in the Stone Age.
The simple-looking tools paint a complex tale of our evolutionary past, and it all began by an ancient lake.
The Story Hidden Within The Wood
Annemieke Milks and her colleagues in their Plos One article explain Schöningen was once a lakeshore, and the location of a hunting ground for early hominids. The site contained butchered remains of horses, red deer, and even a bone from a saber-toothed cat used as a tool.
Ten spears were excavated at the area, which were shaved to points on each end. They varied from about six to ten feet long, and less than two inches in diameter.
Another two smaller pointed sticks were found further away. These are about three feet long and thought to be throwing sticks.
All but one of the weapons were made from spruce, which according to pollen evidence from the site, wasn’t near the hunting ground. Rings within the wood indicate it came from a colder climate. So, the team thinks it may have come from a neighboring forest, or a mountain twenty-five miles away.
Furthermore, it appears a lot of time and craftsmanship went into the hunting sticks. While the spears were created from a tree trunk, the throwing sticks required a specific type of branch with a natural curve. This was then debarked, and smaller branches were cut away.
Many knots were also removed, and the sticks were hewed at with flint tools to partially straighten them. Since there were no cracks in the wood, the team believes the creators also “seasoned” the wood, or allowed it to dry slowly. The centers were also polished or worn, demonstrating long use. As for capability of the tools, they say:
“Such tools could be used at both short and medium distances for stunning terrestrial and aerial prey, and/or breaking the legs of larger ungulates…the throwing sticks are lighter projectiles that are suitable for hunting a variety of prey types, and are potentially easier to use. Such features may therefore point to wider community involvement in hunting.”
In fact, the team thinks it was effective up to about a hundred feet. So, this provides ancient hominids with another effective tool besides spears and indicates a better proficiency with ranged weapons than anticipated.
The traditional view was that spears of this time were cumbersome, and not good throwing weapons. Their range was thought to be from sixteen to thirty feet. However, some recent tests with Schöningen’s spears tell a much different story.
An Ancient Spear Used By Modern Throwers
In External Ballistics of Pleistocene Hand-Thrown Spears: Experimental Performance Data and Implications for Human Evolution, Milks, Parker, and Pope created a replicas of one of the ancient spears. Trained javelin throwers fired these spears at hay bales.
Overall accuracy proved to be about twenty-five percent, which improved the closer one got to a target. It also got higher as the target was raised. The throwers proved the spear could be spun as thrown to improve stability as well. This resulted in spear launches much further than expected.
But the scientists did note one issue.
The modern throwers weren’t trained to hit objects, plus the spears were much different than the traditionally stiff javelins. The researchers also studied modern tribes that still use wooden spears. Milks and her team note:
“The results imply that robust, highly-trained and habitual throwers could throw spears with more power and at least twice as far as has been widely argued for in the literature. The extension to a 20 m (65 ft.) accuracy limit from this experiment implies greater flexibility in hunting strategies than the previous distance estimates.”
The number of spears at the site, along with the throwing sticks (which appear to have been lost in a hunt), and the effort to create these tools implies an organized, thinking group beyond the limited ability attributed to Stone Age hominids.
They appear to be competent throwers by the design of the weapons too. In addition, the researchers believe the throwing sticks indicate this group of hominids may have had the ability to catch smaller prey like birds, and the lightweight stick may have enabled children to join hunts.
With all this in mind, it makes us reexamine our script for humanity a bit.
Human Evolution And Projectiles
People tell the story of David and Goliath like the ultimate underdog tale, but the child’s sling wasn’t a toy. It was a superweapon of their time. In the right hands, it could fire stones with the velocity of modern bullets. Sling users were sought after mercenaries until Roman times.
In many ways, we separated from our primate ancestors by throwing and continuously finding better ways to do it. First with tools, then machines. The ability moved us to the top of the food chain, enabled us to rule empires, and eventually to even leave the planet. Consider the following:
The first depiction of a gun (bombard) found in a Chinese cave dated to 1128 (shows the developed use of gunpowder).
In 1918 humanity fired its first object into the stratosphere (by the largest cannon in WWI).
Humans land on the moon in 1969 (powered with rocketry from WWII).
So, where did the separation first begin? No one will ever know for sure, but three hundred thousand years ago our ancient ancestors gave us a bit of a hint to this murky script. And it all took place by a lake with throwing sticks and spears.
-Originally posted on Medium 7/29/23