# 300,000-Year-Old Stick Suggests Human Ancestors Were Skilled Hunters



## Timeshifter (Apr 26, 2021)

Brilliant this...

'The ancient throwing stick may have been used by Neanderthals or an even earlier hominin...

A recently unearthed, 300,000-year-old wooden stick may have once been thrown by extinct human ancestors hunting wild game, according to new research.

On the surface, the find—a short, pointy piece of brown wood loosed from the mud—sounds drab...'



“It’s a stick, sure,” Jordi Serangeli, 



an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen and co-author of the study, tells the New York Times’ Nicholas St. Fleur. But calling it “just a stick,” he says, would be like calling humanity’s first step on the moon “only dirt with a print.”

'As the researchers report in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, the ancient wood was likely a throwing stick used by either Neanderthals or their even more ancient relatives, Homo heidelbergensis, to kill quarry like waterfowl and rabbits.

Archaeologists found the roughly two-foot long, half-pound throwing stick while conducting excavations in Schöningen, Germany, in 2016'

I can't take any more 

300,000-Year-Old Stick Suggests Human Ancestors Were Skilled Hunters


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## Archive (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: BantaDate: 2020-04-24 17:00:33Reaction Score: 5


I think these articles are having the reverse effect one me desired by those propagating the "headline maintenance." I just read them and laugh and laugh.

300,000 years is a really long time for a stick. The ones my kids use for hiking barely last an afternoon. 

The use of these huge numbers definitely blind people to the absurdity. When you can't even really conceptualize it, it's easy to completely remove common sense based on life experience from your "critical thinking."


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## Archive (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: BrokenAgateDate: 2020-04-24 17:55:38Reaction Score: 5


Oh, sure, a piece of wood is going to last 300,000 years when wooden furniture barely lasts a couple of generations!  There was a time when I believed all the nonsense coming out of the scientific community, but not anymore. Now, I can't take any of it seriously.


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## Archive (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: jd755Date: 2020-04-24 18:12:41Reaction Score: 1


Rinse Wash Repeat

sciencemag.org
_Spears Point to Early European Hunters
By Science News Staff *Feb. 26, 1997* , 7:30 PM
3-4 minutes

Several heavy wooden spears unearthed in northern Germany provide the first concrete evidence that early humans in Europe were active hunters of large animals and offer a window into the lives of Europeans about 400,000 years ago. In today's issue of Nature, archaeologist Hartmut Thieme of the Lower Saxony Office for Heritage Preservation reports finding the remarkably well-preserved weapons, along with flint artifacts and thousands of animal bones, in a coal mine in Schöningen, 100 kilometers east of Hannover.

Because wood is not ordinarily preserved for so long, "these finds provide a wonderful look at a normally invisible aspect of Paleolithic technology," says archaeologist Steve Kuhn of the University of Arizona, Tucson. Until now, the oldest wooden spear from Europe is one dated to 125,000 years ago, found in 1948 between the ribs of an elephant skeleton in Lehringen, only 100 km from the Schöningen site. Thieme says that the spears indicate that premodern humans were more ingenious than many believe.

Found buried 10 meters underground in the mine, the artifacts are strikingly well preserved because they were submerged continuously in watery mud for many millennia, and no oxygen permeated the site, says Thieme. The three spears described in the Nature paper were made from the trunks of small spruce trees, no more than about 5 centimeters in diameter and about 2 meters long. Thieme says the spears' center of gravity is just like that of a javelin, indicating they were "throwing spears," used for killing horses, whose bones litter the site. Other items found nearby include a meter-long stick sharpened at each end, possibly a "throwing stick," also for killing animals, and shorter sticks with notches that might have been made to hold pieces of flint, which, if so, Thieme reports, would make them "the oldest composite tools yet discovered."

The tools were roughly dated to an interglacial period 400,000 years ago by correlating the surrounding sediments to well-known geologic layers. "In that part of the world, they really have the climate and geologic sequences worked out," says Kuhn. "You have to believe them." Because there is little artifactual evidence of humans from this era, archaeologists have been divided over whether they were hunters; one popular school of thought envisioned these people as mostly scavenging their meat. Now, says Thieme, for "the first time in this period ... we have proved very specific, very sophisticated hunting techniques."

The hunters were probably archaic Homo sapiens, likely extremely sturdy individuals able to wield such cumbersome weapons, says Thieme; the rugged thigh bone of such an individual has been found at Boxgrove, a 500,000-year-old site in England. But whoever made the spears, they are the kind of discovery that "leaves one speechless," writes archaeologist Robin Dennell, of the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, in an accompanying commentary in Nature. And the finds aren't over yet: Thieme says he found a fourth spear just last week._


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## Archive (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: BantaDate: 2020-04-24 18:52:24Reaction Score: 7




jd755 said:


> Found buried 10 meters underground in the mine, the artifacts are strikingly well preserved because they were submerged continuously in watery mud for many millennia, and no oxygen permeated the site, says Thieme


No oxygen permeated the *watery* mud. Can someone remind me of the chemical composition of water? H2N? H2He? O brother!


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## HollyHoly (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: HollyHolyDate: 2020-04-24 22:16:31Reaction Score: 0


If I ever stop laughing I'll have more input on this


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## Archive (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: Plastic PaulDate: 2020-04-24 22:40:57Reaction Score: 3


Did they find that above or below the Dinosaur bones?

Last week woke up from my nap on the couch to an episode of the Hairy bikers (cookery programme) they were in Pompei and were with a lady that baked bread to the same recipe as the bread that was found in the ruins of Pompei.I actually spat my coffee when I heard that.


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## Whitewave (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: whitewaveDate: 2020-04-24 23:24:28Reaction Score: 3


The sticks in my yard become mulch in about a year or less. Depends on how much watery mud they're sitting in.


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## JimDuyer (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: Jim DuyerDate: 2020-04-24 23:41:43Reaction Score: 2


Why didn't they just shoot the birds?


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## HollyHoly (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: HollyHolyDate: 2020-04-25 07:57:58Reaction Score: 2




Timeshifter said:


> Brilliant this...
> 
> 'The ancient throwing stick may have been used by Neanderthals or an even earlier hominin...
> 
> ...


archaeologists are idiots  here's a throw sick  

also a throw stick 


another one  

this appears to be a  tool of some kind .I  drew an arrow to show that it has a handle on it  so not a throw stick  
 I dunno what this is but aint a throw stick , not to take away anything from the mindboggling sophistication of  the Neanderthals or Homo Erectus or whatever .


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## Felix Noille (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: FelixnoilleDate: 2020-04-25 11:18:25Reaction Score: 2




jd755 said:


> Thieme says he found a fourth spear just last week.


Oh no... not The Fourth Spear. Please, anything but that... 



Jim Duyer said:


> Why didn't they just shoot the birds?


Don't be a stick in the mud Jim.


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## JimDuyer (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: Jim DuyerDate: 2020-04-25 16:18:59Reaction Score: 3




HollyHoly said:


> archaeologists are idiots  here's a throw sick View attachment 44655
> 
> also a throw stick View attachment 44656
> 
> ...


The handle would cause the force of the blow to be directed to its weakest portion - the handle itself. Which would break first.  So it's not a weapon.  More likely an auroch prod - to get them moving, or perhaps a way to get ahead in the food lines, if you placed them in a certain spot to the rear of the person in front of you.


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## Whitewave (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: whitewaveDate: 2020-04-25 16:21:37Reaction Score: 6




Jim Duyer said:


> The handle would cause the force of the blow to be directed to its weakest portion - the handle itself. Which would break first.  So it's not a weapon.  More likely an auroch prod - to get them moving, or perhaps a way to get ahead in the food lines, if you placed them in a certain spot to the rear of the person in front of you.


Nah, carrying a potted cactus work much better for prodding people ahead of you in line. (Voice of experience )


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## Archive (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: TheBigKimJonDate: 2020-04-27 12:51:22Reaction Score: 2




Plastic Paul said:


> Did they find that above or below the Dinosaur bones?
> 
> Last week woke up from my nap on the couch to an episode of the Hairy bikers (cookery programme) they were in Pompei and were with a lady that baked bread to the same recipe as the bread that was found in the ruins of Pompei.I actually spat my coffee when I heard that.


I hope she didn't burn it?


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## Revelinmusic (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: revelinmusicDate: 2020-04-27 15:09:21Reaction Score: 2


If there is anything that makes me dumb, it is the act of reading that article.


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## SuperTrouper (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: SuperTrouperDate: 2020-04-29 10:54:21Reaction Score: 3


These acheologists are the biggest con artists on the planet. And they know it, too, as I take it that they're not halfwits. They also know that no one can actually prove them wrong because they are the "experts" with a whole bunch of degrees. What a hoot.


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