Doggerland.

[Digit]

Did any UK viewers watch the Time Team Special about Doggerland last night?
I want to see if you spotted the same anomaly as I did.

Roy.

[Digit]

20 people have read the above but no replies so far.
The programme was shown earlier this year and repeated last night.
I missed a good deal of the first showing, hence my observations now.
The programme showed some of the numerous bones and artefacts that have been recovered over the years from beneath the North Sea.
We were informed that the artefacts were Neandertal in origin.
We were also shown a large bone, reputedly from a species of mammoth, and was referred to as a spike that formed the characteristic hump on Mammoths.
The bone was pierced through by a hole that we were informed was a pus channel after an injury from a presumed spear.
So, my problem, Neandertals were too stupid to throw spears, instead they walked upto a mammoth and repeatedly stabbed it till it finally gave up and died!
Also the construction of their arms made casting a spear impossible.
Also their spears were heavy and clumsy and not designed for casting.
Well so we are told!
If this hole in the bone was a pus channel the animal was not fatally injured.
At the time of its death it was a large adult, the injury may have been inflicted earlier of course but no info was offered on that.
So how does anyone stab an animal in a non-fatal area with a thrusting spear to cause an injury about ten feet off the ground?
Why would anyone risk life and limb to stab an animal in an area that they must have known would not guarantee a fatal injury?

Roy.

[Minimalist]

You did address it to UK viewers.

By the time they show it over here I'm afraid it will be old news.

[Digit]

Being a local event I wouldn't have thought that you will get it Min.
But what's your opinion on the argument that Neadertals used thrusting spears as opposed to casting them?
Common sense says that the injury referred to can have only come from a spear that was cast rather than a lunge.

Roy.

[john]

All -

http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news10.htm

This clearly proves that Homo n. was way more stupid

Than Homo h.

Yes?

If there was a way to be more sarcastic......

Well, let's just say I'm working on it.


hoka hey

john

[Digit]

There was a programme shown over here John 'proving' that HSN couldn't throw spears. Their elbows were said to make it near impossible. The programme even argued that their heavy spears 'proved' that they were used for stabbing not throwing as you can throw a light spear further than a heavy one.
None of this computes when you find a wound that high on an animal.
Secondly the argument about weight strikes me as BS. A large pachyderm can have skin over an inch thick, underneath on a Mammoth would have been layers of fat. The whole over lain by a thick coat of long hair.
To get through that lot and penetrate deep enough to cause a fatal injury needs a lot of inertia.
There is no point in being able to hit a Mammoth at twice the distance of your mates if the damn thing bounces off!
Can anyone see any faults in my line of thought?

Roy.

[Leona Conner]

The channel over here that showed Time Team stopped a few years back. I have e-mailed them asking to get the show back, but then I'm just one little old lady.

I saw a program not long ago that said that reason that HSN's had to thrust their spears was because they populated areas that were forested and so didn't have the open space need to learn to throw. Perhaps the wound in the artical was done ealier by a man in a tree trying to kill the animal as it passed under it or some other high place.

[Digit]

The larger pachyderms weren't forest dwellers as I understand it Le. Their insulation etc would infer that they lived in temps too cold for trees, ie above the tree line.
A wound that high up was either a shot that was badly aimed or there had to be a special reason for aiming at that spot, a nexus of nerves, major blood vessels for example.
As the animal survived it must have been on its feet, it follows then that a spear thrust could not have inflicted the injury, a cast spear could.
The earlier programme even used the argument that the number of HSNs with bone fractures proves that they stabbed the big pachyderms, it doesn't, it simply suggests that they got too close to them, assuming that the fractures were caused by animals at all.
Gengis Khan issued his warriors with silk shirts as arrows would drag the fine material into the wound and the silk then made it possible to retrieve the point.
Large Mammoths had coarse outer hairs many inches long, these would have been dragged into the wounds caused by the cutting edge of stone points. The skin on the big adults could be nearly three inches thick in the area of the vital organs, then there was several inches of fat.
Driving a point through that would best be achieved with a heavy weapon at close range, throwing it would be safer than running at the animal, and with the heavy musculature of HSN the spear would have gone in deep.
Just as English archers developed extra muscle on one side so some HSN skeletons show similar development.
The other programme I referred to argued that this 'proved' they stabbed rather than cast, which appears to be complete rubbish to me!

Roy.

[Minimalist]

But what's your opinion on the argument that Neadertals used thrusting spears as opposed to casting them?

I would expect ANY hunter to take along a variety of tools/weapons to do the job, Dig. A bow and arrow for long range work, a javelin or atlatl for mid-range, a spear for close up work or defense against predators ( even a boar can be damned dangerous to someone armed with a light throwing spear!) and finally a knife and/or club for finishing up the job.

Now, where does the notion that stone age hunters used only one type of weapon at a time come from? I submit it comes from the idea that if we find a big stone point we assume they used a thrusting spear and if we find a small stone point it was for an atlatl. Charlie and I once had a discussion about points found at mammoth kills.
As I recall, part of the discussion ended up with the idea that big points could be re-sharpened into smaller points but small points that broke were too small for further use and therefore THOSE are the ones we find left at the kill sites.
I have no doubt you can hamstring a mammoth by shooting some small points into its back legs but to finish it off I think you need something that will penetrate to the vital organs.

Well.... you asked.

[Digit]

Agree with every word Min as your comments are bedded in logic.
But remember, in the case I am referring to we are talking Mammoth, and Neandertal. Currently there is no evidence of a spear thrower or Bow within HSN culture.
Last night we were treated to episode two of Neandertal Code about the sequencing of HSN's genetic code, you may already have seen it, and once again we were informed the HSN used spears for close in stabbing, yet the evidence of the Mammoth bone recovered from Doggerland disputes that for the reasons I have stated.
Further, the programme stated that the 'language' gene has been found in HSN DNA, fine, this 'proves' that HSN and HSS interbred and that modern humans inherited their language ability from HSN.
This 'proves' nothing of the sort!
It simply establishes that HSN had that gene, nothing more!
Unless the DNA from early HSS is found to be minus that gene that 'proof' is simply wishful thinking.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Currently there is no evidence of a spear thrower or Bow within HSN culture.

But what is that "evidence?" A bow, it's arrows, an atlatl or its javelins are, essentially, sticks. We don't have "thrusting spears" either. All we have are the points. As I recall seeing, people have turned up piles of small points to go with the big points. The simple fact is that if we were going on the theory that we only credit them with what we actually find in the way of artifacts then why not assume that they held the points and did their killing hand-to-hand?



The notion that they "only" hunted mammoths is pretty funny. I imagine they hunted whatever they could get a crack at. I have a hard time imagining anyone stabbing something like a rabbit with a thrusting spear.

[Cognito]

Currently there is no evidence of a spear thrower or Bow within HSN culture.

Very interesting. We have a packet of front-weighted javelins made from a Spruce tree as retrieved from a cache in Germany dated to 380Kya. Yet, Hsn was too stupid to continue the technology of their forebears.

What were they using that big brain for, anyway? Contemplation of the ice age?

[Minimalist]

If the terrain was heavily forested I can see an argument that missile weapons would be less useful as it is harder to get a clear shot. But even in the heaviest forest there are clearings.

What I simply cannot accept is the idea that these hunters had only one technique at a time or one target at a time. Let's be clear, these people had no backup plan. If they didn't make a kill, they starved. There was no running out to Burger King if there was nothing in the refrigerator.

Would the same tactics used for hunting a plodding animal like a mammoth work on something as agile as a deer? I doubt it.

[kbs2244]

As I recall, the harpoons used by the large Yankee whaling ships were in two pieces.
The metal “point” was about 6 feet long and meant to get to the organs with the wooden shaft seated in a socket and was roped for retrieval.
In effect it was a reloadable spear.
It didn’t take up as much room as a bunch of long, single piece spears.
They were both thrown and thrust.
Is there any reason this style cound or could not have been used?

[Digit]

Certainly Min we may 'assume' the existence of spear throwers, but there is no evidence in support, to the degree that the programmes dismissed the whole idea by insisting that HSN stabbed their prey.
I was not suggesting that HSN hunted only Mammoths, I simply pointed that where Mammoths roamed there would be little in the way of tree cover, except perhaps in very sheltered localities, and the animal with the wound high up on its shoulders was a mature Mammoth.
The programmes went on to show an enactment of HSN running down a Red Deer (Elk) in forested cover. Sorry Min but I think it unlikely, except where as you state in clearings. In the programmes the enactment was in the tree cover and the argument was, as you suggest, the lack of a clear shot, so they ran them down and stabbed them.
In European woods mature trees are well spaced and a clear shot would IMO be somewhat more of a likely possibility than running like Hell after an Elk, especially where the forest floor would have been obstructed by fallen timber and thick under brush at the clearing's edges.

Would the same tactics used for hunting a plodding animal like a mammoth work on something as agile as a deer? I doubt it.

Likewise Min, and if I was placing bets on the outcome of running down an Elk my limited funds would be on the Elk.
In Europe Red Deer feed in clearings, undoubtedly they would have to make use of tracks between clearings, and ambushing them sounds feasible, but I think you could rapidly starve trying to run them down. It is certainly not a sure fire way of feeding the family I think.

Roy.