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.
