Thrusting Neanderthals?

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

All,

Given that things have been unbearingly quiet on the Forum front, as of late, and hoping to impel some change, I feel a need to pass on to you this impressive demonstration of scientific thrust recently relayed by the New Scientist from the Journal of --what else -- Archaeological Science.

Neanderthals' strong-arm tactics revealed

10:24 21 November 02

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

Neanderthals and early humans knew how to make spears - but did not know how to throw them. Instead, they had a limited hunting strategy, and used their spears merely to stab animals they had already trapped or ambushed.

Sophisticated hunters use long-range weapons

This finding by a team of anthropologists provides an important insight into a defining moment in our ancestors' development, when early humans evolved from hunters who killed at close-quarters to sophisticated killers capable of bringing down large beasts from a distance.

The first direct evidence of thrown spears dates back to about 19,000 years ago. That is the age of the first known atlatl, or spear thrower - a device that allows a long, flexible dart to be thrown accurately at a range of 35 metres or more. Stone points that look like they were designed to be used with thrown spears date back to about 35,000 years ago.

Strong-arm tactics

But other evidence seemed to support the idea that spear throwing evolved much earlier. Analysis of the arm bones of Neanderthals, who lived between 230,000 and 30,000 years ago, and early humans living at the same time show that both were much stronger in one arm than the other; the difference is as great as that seen in professional tennis players today. That suggests they threw spears, rather than using both arms to thrust them.

Two-handed thrust

But Steven Churchill at Duke University in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, thinks this reasoning is flawed. A two-handed spear thrust will put far more stress on the dominant arm holding the back end of the spear than the front arm, he says. This would explain the differences in strength found in fossil bones.

To test this idea, Churchill and his colleagues Daniel Schmitt and William Hylander initially measured the dimensions of a number of Neanderthal humerus (upper arm) bones. This showed they are thicker front to back than side to side, which is what would be expected if the bones had adapted to cope with an asymmetric force.

Later humans who were known to have used spears had rounder humeri, which suggests that throwing a spear distributes force relatively evenly along the bones.

To find out exactly what forces are involved in thrusting a spear - rather than throwing one - the researchers fitted an aluminium pole with two sets of sensors, one at the front and another at the back. They then asked student volunteers to thrust the pole into a pad, and measured the forces that this generated.

On average, the volunteers generated 70 per cent more force with the dominant back arm than with the front arm. In extreme cases, the force on one arm was six times that on the other. Each volunteer also oriented their humerus in a way consistent with the thickening measured in Neanderthal arms.

Churchill says that using the thrusting technique just once a week would probably be enough to produce the bone deformities seen in Neanderthals. Some models suggest that Neanderthals would have had to kill their favoured prey - reindeer, elk, horse and bison - several times a week to support a family.

Journal reference: Journal of Archaeological Science (vol 30, p 103).

[lagarvelho]

Neanderthals' strong-arm tactics revealed
10:24 21 November 02
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

Jacques:

I'm sure Churchill is right as far as his model goes.  My problem with this(and all attempts to model the possible behavior of prehistoric humans, whether "modern" or "archaic", is that we really have no way of knowing *what* they might have done, to get themselves in the shape they were in.  The "conventional wisdom" is that Neandertals used thrusting spears and brought home their dinners at close range with their target.  This may well have been true most of the time, especially when "ambush hunting" certain kinds of hooved animals such as deer in the forest(or wild asses in the desert brush or whatever).  IOW, most Neandertals who hunted probably used thrusting spears and threw them at close quarters with either or both hands in daily routines.  But then this raises a question(and I don't pretend to be able to answer it):  How do things like the Schoeningen spears fit in?  If I understand them corrrectly, they are more like javelins than "thrusting spears".  And maybe they could be thrown at longer range than a "thrusting spear".  Or maybe not?  If Churchill's evidence is correct, does that mean implements like the Schoeningen spears would have been thrown with both hands, but the main force of the throw or thrust was with the dominant hand?  Churchill's contribution to this subject is interesting and valuable, but it seems to me it raises as many questions as it appears to answer.  Or maybe *I'm* asking the wrong question?
Anne G

[Dale Hoogeveen]

All,

Given that things have been unbearingly quiet on the Forum front, as of late, and hoping to impel some change, I feel a need to pass on to you this impressive demonstration of scientific thrust recently relayed by the New Scientist from the Journal of --what else -- Archaeological Science.

Neanderthals' strong-arm tactics revealed

10:24 21 November 02

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

<snip>

Churchill says that using the thrusting technique just once a week would probably be enough to produce the bone deformities seen in Neanderthals. Some models suggest that Neanderthals would have had to kill their favoured prey - reindeer, elk, horse and bison - several times a week to support a family.

Journal reference: Journal of Archaeological Science (vol 30, p 103).

With reindeer, elk and horse to maybe 800 pounds, cattle and bison to perhaps 1500 to 2000 and a cutout of meat to waste of something like 50%, that amount of hunting would produce from 20,000 to 50,000 pounds of meat a year per family plus some hundreds of hides, excess bone wasteage and a huge amount of visceral offal, resulting either in total extinction of the prey animals or flooding the continent with an overpopulation of Neanderthals or both, none of which happened over the period of Neanderthal residence in Europe.

I grew up on a sharecropper farm in Iowa, which produced most of its own meat, and we ate a lot of meat.  My parents butchered 1 steer and 2 hogs a year, plus maybe 50 or 60 chickens.  Even had they augmented that with an equal amount of purchased meat, which they did not, they would only have had 6 large animals a year, to provide what was a large main meat portion at nearly every one of the three main meals and also usually a lesser portion at each of the mid-meal coffee breaks for a family of 5 plus the necessary extra courtesy amount for visitors at coffee time and for those meals where we had guests.

That amounts to hunting several times a year rather than several times a week, and would in no way provide for specialized muscle development, unless that would have come from constant practise sessions rather than actual hunting episodes.  Of course, my parents rationed the meat, planned their meals pretty carefully, and used all the cuts, including the less glamourous ones, and were able to completely preserve all of it for future use, thanks to canning, locker plants, and eventually a pair of home freezers.

The question becomes one of how much of each kill the Neanderthals were able to use.  They would have had natural cooling and refrigeration for maybe 8 months of the year, from the beginning of autumn cooldown to whenever spring merged into summer, provided they were able to dismember and properly cool their kills, which I expect they almost certainly knew something about.  

Of course, ungulant meat actually stays palatable for human consumption a long time, if some simple handling steps are followed at kill and butcher time.  It is not reasonable to me that that Neanderthals had the intense skills safely and regularly to kill large and dangerous prey, but lacked skill in meat handling after the kill.

Anne says:

Churchill's contribution to this subject is interesting and valuable, but it seems to me it raises as many questions as it appears to answer.  Or maybe *I'm* asking the wrong question?

I think that rather than you asking the wrong question Churchill is not asking careful enough questions.  

Dutch

[lagarvelho]

Dutch:

Churchill's contribution to this subject is interesting and valuable, but it seems to me it raises as many questions as it appears to answer.  Or maybe *I'm* asking the wrong question?

I think that rather than you asking the wrong question Churchill is not asking careful enough questions.  


This may well be.  However, when I said that I *might* be asking the wrong questions, I was wondering whether the apparent evidence of the Schoeningen spears might be relevant.  Evidently Churchill didn't think of it.  Maybe he was more interested in how the uneven development of the dominant hand or arm v. the nondominant hand or arm might occur.  This seems to be closer to his idea.  If this is the case, then he obviously(from his point of view)doesn't need to think about the Schoningen spears and how they might have been used(longer range v. up close or maybe something else?).  But this also leaves open the possibility that *you* are right, and he's not asking enough questions in the right context.
Anne g

[John Hawks]

... I was wondering whether the apparent evidence of the Schoeningen spears might be relevant.  Evidently Churchill didn't think of it....
Anne g

In the article, Schmitt and Churchill note that the Schoeningen and other known Middle Pleistocene spears are significantly thicker and heavier than either throwing spears or thrusting spears of historic hunters, and range between thrusting spears and digging sticks in these properties, making it unlikely that they were built for throwing, despite previous claims about their aerodynamic properties.

--John Hawks

[Daryl Habel]

I'll credit Gerrit Hanenburg for noticing and posting on another forum that this paper is available free.

Full ref of the original paper:

Schmitt, D. & Churchill, S.E. 2003. Experimental Evidence Concerning Spear
Use in Neandertals and Early Modern Humans. Journal of Archeological
Science 30(1): 103-114.

This issue is complimentary and thus the full text is freely available at
the journals section of Elsevier's ScienceDirect at:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/

You'll have to click on the small "Journals" icon located near the top left side of the page - this leads to an index page of journals - locate Journal of Archaeological Science by clicking the "j" icon - this should lead to a page showing "volume 30 issue 1" (January 2003), which is "complementary" - click and enjoy.

[colin]

Anne
I'm sure you are right to point out that we cannot know what activities may have led to the diferential developement of one arm over the other - it could as well have been tree chopping, flint flaking (or playing tennis) as spear thrusting.
You are also correct to point out the significance of the Schoeningen spears: it surely strains credulity to imagine that the people who made such well-crafted objects would be incapable of seeing the benefits of "sophisticated remote killing", ie throwing them. After all, wrestling with 800lbs of furry mammal on the end of your kebab is a hell of a way to get your dinner. Robin Dennell observed that the centre of gravity of the spears was one third of the length from the tip - precisely as in modern javelins. They may be heavier than modern equivalents - as John Hawks points out in his post - but after all so was Heidelberg Man around 400k ybp when the spears were made!  
Cheers
Colin