Pikes were used much the same way right? Surprised I never put the two together, ancient humans weren’t stupid so of course they’d realize that was a better way of causing harm than just throwing it. Not to mention their use of leverage in weapons like the Atlatl. No clue on the timespan of these things but I do find this stuff interesting.
I’m sure so much of our history is more or less completely unknowable simply because the remains all degraded quickly.
How many things made out of wood that simply rotted away, or burned or any one of a thousand things.
Stone tools were a game changer in every sense.
I would posit string being the real game changer. How do you think they got the stone on the end of a stick?
Honest answer, usually animal sinew, or certain grasses could be used as well. The nice thing with string, once it was figured out was you could make as much as you could, and make it as long as you wanted.
I totally count sinew as string. That probably led to plant string. Think about really fine string, or thread, and think about how many miles of it you carry around on you every day. It’s crazy how taken for granted it is!
How do you think they got the stone on the end of a stick
For a long time, they didn’t.
Hand stone tools predate everything except sharpened sticks as spears.
Without the Olduvai tools, we have no civilization.
The Clovis period was around 12,000 years ago in North America.
Fuckin bullshit. I’ve seen the cave paintings - they were throwing those fuckers
How do you think they got the mammoth to run into the trap of spears? Also, in case it turned towards you, you’d want a spear in your hands to make him turn.
Edit: judging by the picture in the post, if you couldn’t run away, you might jam the back end into the ground beside/behind yourself and hold up the point so at least he’d be wounded when he squashed you
You’re all wrong. It was a, “Mr. Mastodon, you dropped your spears!” situation.
As far as I know, the Clovis people did not make cave paintings and the people who did make cave paintings didn’t hunt mammoths.
Reallllyyy. That’s pretty interesting.
Is this the Mandela effect here? Are not all of the cave paintings and cave drawings I’ve ever seen ones of cave peoples throwing spears at wooly mammoths? Have we been Swiftboated by cave people? Stolen cave valor?
I always pictured mammoths being more docile: disinclined to charge. Didn’t realize they could be more of a wooly bully.
Elephants charge pretty easily, so that part doesn’t surprise me.
I did that thing where I lied on the internet. The preamble was there purely as a setup for the greatest joke of all time.
Worth
Yeah, if your main form of offense/defense is that you are: large, and have massive fuck-off tusks on your front then charging seems to be a pretty good go to.
Could you just imagine killing an animal that size with a big stick? I’d tell everyone I met, probably multiple times.
Everyone you’d met was probably with you at the time. So their response would be, “yeah we know. Shut up about that mammoth already. It’s been two weeks and we have to go kill another mammoth.”
So if the theory is that spears were planted in the ground rather than thrown, that means there was probably a ton of them in the ground and mammoths were chased into the trap.
Planted in the ground could mean that they were left free standing or that they held the backend against the ground whilst holding onto it still.
Prehistoric lego.
Prehistoric Minecraft Automatic Mob Farm.
I would be surprised if they didn’t use pitfall traps with spikes. That’s how I would take down an elephant
I believe that’s a tiger trap
It was the first Olympic sport…run from.the Mammoth
Isnt this how you would hunt boar too?
This is probably how you hunt nearly everything which is faster than you as long as you don’t have the means to kill it with one shot.
You might be right, but i think it also has to do with the charging behavior of those animals. The plant a spear strat seems less effective if your prey is better able to change directions.
Yes, but for prey which changes directions the tactics are not so different. You work as a group, drive them to a cliff and this is their end.
Well yes, obviously.
