Pointed advantages.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

All,

For your information, here is one of a number of short reports on what transpired at the recent Paleoanthropology Society meeting held one month ago (April 5-6), in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This one is an account of John Shea’s presentation entitled The origins and antiquity of stone projectile points. The coverage of what Alison Brooks has to say is also interesting, but I have yet to find an actual (recent) source or reference; her name does not appear in the program of the meeting which can be found HERE.

Needless to say, I am looking forward to reading more about all this (i.e., actual papers), if only to find out what happened to all these neat little points (see attached image which I had to post) after they had left Africa!

Jacques Cinq-Mars

Modern Humans Made Their Point

By ANN GIBBONS -- Science, 22 April 2005,
308: 491

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 known spear 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.”

[Daryl Habel]

Needless to say, I am looking forward to reading more about all this (i.e., actual papers), if only to find out what happened to all these neat little points (see attached image which I had to post) after they had left Africa!

Jacques,

Thanks for passing this along.  I haven't been keeping up with my library visits, so missed the Gibbons' article in Science.  Referring to: "what happened to all these neat little points...after they had left Africa," that seems a pertinent question.  

What is the known distribution and chronology of "neat little points" outside Africa?  Off the top of my head, I can't think of [any/many] examples (but allowing for my ignorance, there might be some or many). Is this perhaps also your question?.

Very interesting.  Hopefully, some papers on this will appear in the near future.

Dar    

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

 

Jacques,

Thanks for passing this along.  I haven't been keeping up with my library visits, so missed the Gibbons' article in Science.  Referring to: "what happened to all these neat little points...after they had left Africa," that seems a pertinent question. 

What is the known distribution and chronology of "neat little points" outside Africa?  Off the top of my head, I can't think of [any/many] examples (but allowing for my ignorance, there might be some or many). Is this perhaps also your question?

Very interesting.  Hopefully, some papers on this will appear in the near future.

Dar   

Dar

My question about the fate of the “neat little points” was both tongue-in-cheek -- call it lithic or flinty irony -- and quite serious.

It stems from the fact that the short report under consideration presents us with a somewhat (expectable ?) confusing/unclear amalgamation of two, poorly digested very different palaeo-technological issues: the first one having to do with the apparent great (African) antiquity of the “neat little points”, and the second one pertaining to the necessarily associated “launchers” (i.e., the  PDDs , short for “projectile delivery devices”) which could have been variations on the atlatl  and bow technologies.

As unfair and tongue-in-cheek, again, as it may be, a brief, rambling scenario based on this particular story -- that is somehow supposed to tell us a bit about the ultimate domination of Eurasia by African expatriates -- could be constructed along the following lines:

- an very ancient, mostly southern African, emergence of the technologies required for the production and propulsion of small, well fashioned stone points;

- a slow process of northward spread and fanning out of these technologies, being a dispersal that seems to be characterized (as far as I can tell) by a decrease in visibility from the record;

- a complete or near complete (not to mention, incomprehensible) filtering out of the “neat little points” while going through the Near East;

- followed, as it should, by the further, rapid expansion in Europe and beyond of an overwhelming combination -- by assumed European Neanderthal technological standards -- of new types of “armatures”, propelled, with regards to achieved distances and accuracy, by increasingly efficient PDDs; and, finally,

- the accelerated dispersal pace of this winning combination, until the European locals got completely and rapidly (directly/personally or indirectly) “out-competed”.

This is obviously very “boy scoutish” (I think I used this qualifier before) and I don’t believe for a second that this is what Shea and Brooks were really talking about.

Jacques.

PS    Regarding your first comment and specifically having in mind the needs/good of the Forum, I will say that “keeping up with library visits” is indeed an impossible task; especially when so very few people/participants get involved in the process.

[Daryl Habel]

Dear Jacques,

Thanks for the reply.  It is as I thought, an "amalgamation" (your apt word) of ideas about points and launchers.  Your 'boy-scoutish' scenario ran its course through my mind in much the same way.  That doesn't curb my curiosity about what John Shea or Alison Brooks actually might have planned for publication about the origin and spread of these neat little points and their supposedly associated projectile delivery devices.

Regards,
Dar