Actual Atlatl Penetration

[uniface]

Scroll down to the picture of the bison skull
http://www.wbreckinridge.com/FlintGallery1.html

[Digit]

And would you please try to conseive of a time before the spear thrower as my OP? Ta!

Roy.

[uniface]

This much I can say on that : absent the atlatl (or bow), Man as Beefeater, other than by occasional scavenging or lucky coincidence, is an idea that finds no corresponding niche in feasibility. IOW, man at the top of the food chain. Which equates with the basic notion of "man" well enough.

This is part and parcel of an overall realisation : such low-tech subsistence strategies as you are envisioning (and imposing on landscapes that render them impossibilities) are feasible only in selected environments. But even with perfect adaption, the tougher the environment, the more highly technological must be the adaption to it if actually surviving and prospering is to be the outcome.

Technology in this sense does not mean elaborate or complicated -- it means simple, ingenious, effective and reliable. As in the Esquimo's multitude of purpose-specific tools. As in survival in northern coastal regions being dependent (in part) on nets and smoking to lay in a years' supply of salmon, shad, et al. during the spring run.

At every interface of man with potential food, there has to be a technology that enables it to be harvested with maximum reliability and minimum risk to the harvestors. Absent which, absent reliable food. Absent which, absent people.

Modern humans have fared pretty badly in attacks by deer -- even hunters with wounded ones. Up the scale to horse, elk and moose (to say nothing of aurochs, mastodon, mammoth and their ilk), armed with only a pointy stick, and good luck to you. You'll certainly need it.

And even this is assuming you can get to the wounded level with them on a reliable enough basis to presume survival. Animals learn too.

The atlatl is a far simpler example of technology than even the needle &/or thread from plant fibres. The hypothetical point at which that even that level of technology had yet to appear is a level at which hominid habitation of sub-glacial Europe and America is inconceiveable.

At least to Yr. Obt. Svt.

[Digit]

I'm sorry Uni but I'm not even bothering to read all that, unless you can convince me that Moses descended from the mount with drawings for a spear thrower it ran thus, Spear: Spear plus thrower: Bow and Arrow: Fire arms!
In addition there is no suggestion in those pics that the point is from an Atlatl dart, it looks more like an arrow point to me, see here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile_point

the penetration is as I warned you it would be and the angle suggests to me that the animal was already down, and what age is the skull?

Roy.

[uniface]

The point is a Calf Creek (as you would have noticed had you bothered to scroll down several inches to the intact example of one below it. Which gives you the size of it as well). It dates the skull to ca. 5,000 BC, give or take. It was obviously not downed when that event happened, as nobody in his right mind would spear an animal there, and Samson himself could not have acheived that kind of penetration with a point that wide without a significant mechanical advantage.

The rest of it is just ideologically-driven twaddle. Your credo qui absurdum notwithstanding, people cannot survive and flourish in harsh and unforgiving environments without the means necessary to do so. The fact that they did establishes that they had the means.

That is the brick wall your theoretical insistence that they somehow or other must have runs into head-on.

As to mankind's ultimate origins,Nobody knows. Darwinians included. I'm content to leave it at that. Admission of our incapacity to deal meaningfully with it is no shame, but simple honesty.

[uniface]

In fine : that people were in Australia by +/- 60,000 BC establishes that they either had boats (and used them) or were put there by some off-the-edge-of-the-current-picture means.

I cannot (honestly) use that no one has found a boat of that age against the boat assumption, and you cannot (honestly) use your inability to acknowledge any other mechanism against the alternative.

Both are attempts to account for things staying within the limitations of the currently imaginable. No more.

I don't see where one set of limitations is necessarily preferable to another set.

Especially given that the alternate construal can so usefully be a poodle on the ankle of the reigning orthodoxy.

[Minimalist]

I think what Dig is trying to say Uni, (to continue your analogy) is that before anyone built a boat they had to notice that a log floated and make the mental connection between such floating logs AND getting to the other side of a lake or river. This mental connection cannot be understated. If Bednarik is right, and he seems to be, about the peopling of the islands of Indonesia c 800,000 BC it is actual evidence for sea-borne transport AND human cognition in a tangible problem-solving sense, a very long time ago.

Likewise, before you can have a spear "thrower" you must have a spear. It's a technological improvement in the same sense that the machine gun is an outgrowth of the musket.

[Digit]

Thank you Min! But Uni's logic seemssomewhat different.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

I agree with him to the point that the image of a caveman going after a rabbit with a thrusting spear is pretty funny. I don't know that they'd use a spear for that at all. A trap/snare/net seems far more efficient for small game.

However, after the first head-on assault on a mammoth with thrusting spears it would seem that the survivors would have plenty of time to think about their choice of tactics while they recovered.

"Fellas...we need to find a way to slow that sucker down before we go in close again." And the arms race was on.

[Digit]

I agree with him to the point that the image of a caveman going after a rabbit with a thrusting spear is pretty funny. I don't know that they'd use a spear for that at all. A trap/snare/net seems far more efficient for small game.

I agree Min and actually never made such a suggestion. If you check back all my posts have been related to large prey and spears.
The image still looks like an Arrow point to me, and as I argued at the start, what ever the point it would need to be so sized that the wound would permit the passage of the shaft or penetration would cease when the shaft met the hide. If you examine the pic closely that is exactly what has happened to the point. The worst that would have caused is a headache!

Roy.

[Minimalist]

The image still looks like an Arrow point to me

Actually, I thought it looked too big to be an arrow point in relation to the skull size. The only reason I can think of for stabbing an animal in the skull with a spear was if it was coming at you with horns lowered and it was your last chance before dying.

[Digit]

If it's not an Arrow point Min then it's an Atlatl point IMO, spear points tend to be longer and narrower. I'm still puzzled by the angle of entry, which seems to be upwards.
Either the animal had its head up or it was foundered.

The question of how to distinguish an arrowpoint from a point used on a larger weapon is non-trivial; the best indication is the width of the hafting area, which will correlate to the width of the shaft.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

I can't make much out of the photo. Forgetting everything else, we don't know what angle the camera was at when it was taken.

I simply can't think of a less likely spot to try to penetrate intentionally than the skull. Maybe the target was the eye and the animal simply ducked?

Ain't speculation grand?

[Digit]

I accept that I could be completely wrong Min, but using the angle of the horn can you see the groove in the bone leading upto the point? That is what what makes me think that, either the animal's head was raised, unlikely in charge IMO, or it was down and the strike was downwards.
The point size is difficult to ascertain as we don't know the size of the skull, but the shaft mounting point is sheared away, exactly as I predicted at the start with small points.

Roy.

[dannan14]

So the animal was led into a surround and the spear was cast from above. Perhaps from the top of a boulder or a ridge above the surround.