Fifteen years have passed since German scientists unearthed a small cache of wooden spears believed to be the hunting tools of long-lost Neanderthals.
The nearly 400,000-year-old spears have shed light on the hunting practices of ancient humans, but scientists can't agree on how the weapons were used. Were they thrown at big game from a distance or thrust into animals at close range?
To find out, Kenyon College paleoanthropologist Bruce Hardy devised a nifty test that relies on another ancient culture for help. But first, let's go back to 1995, when German researchers found the three spears, each carved from the trunk of a spruce tree. The spears, found at what appeared to be an ancient lake shore hunting ground, were discovered with more than 10,000 animal bones.
That told researchers that these hunters perhaps ambushed herds of horses that showed up at the drinking hole. "These are the oldest hunting tools that we know of," said David Hohl, a third-year anthropology student at Kenyon. However, the spears are huge - 6 feet to more than 7 feet long. "The question is, are they too heavy to be thrown effectively?" Hardy said.
Then again, the German researchers reported in a 1997 paper that the spears were shaped to be thickest toward the front, with a long, tapered tail, similar to a modern javelin. That suggests that they were made for throwing rather than jabbing.
To find out, Hardy's team carved replica spears from sycamore trees. Then they constructed a ballista, a Roman invention similar to a crossbow that fires projectiles. Each spear can be "thrown" at a precise angle and distance.
For the "prey," Hardy went to a local butcher and picked up a fresh cowhide still soaked in fat and grease. The team wrapped it around a wooden box that contained two tubs of ballistics gel, which would help the researchers measure wound depth.
Last month, on a cold, snowy day, the team took its ballista to an empty field on campus and began firing spears. After a few adjustments, they hit their target. But instead of penetrating and "mortally wounding" the prey, the spears bounced off its hide.
A dozen or more shots had the same result. Then Hardy realized the problem. The hide was draped over the box and wasn't tight to the ballistics gel. What the spears were hitting was more like a drum than an animal. "We're not hitting the gel; we're hitting an elastic drum," Hardy said.
He and the others removed the ballistics gel from the tubs and placed it directly against the hide. But the results were the same. At one point, they even ditched the ballista and took turns charging the box with spears in hand.
Nothing worked. They couldn't put so much as a small hole in the hide. "We're definitely getting a good idea of how difficult it is to penetrate the skin of a large animal," Hohl said.
A week later, the team reloaded the ballista and aimed its spears at sheep hide. Bingo. The spears routinely penetrated the hide from as far as 95 feet away. "We clearly showed that these spears were effective as long-range projectiles for thin-skinned animals and not for thick-skinned," Hardy said.
He said the experiments gave the team a new appreciation for the early humans. "They were able to kill large animals," Hardy said. "They were doing something right and us modern humans just haven't figured out what that is yet."
Author: Wesley Lowery | Source: The Columbus Dispatch [January 09, 2011]
