Spears of Joseph A. Rony the Elder and Gene M. Auell (part 2)
So, when did the first spears appear with the first tips made of stone? Finally, science can answer this question somewhat more definitely. Today, the oldest wooden spear without a tip, but simply with a turned point, is a spear found in Essex and eight wooden spears from Schöningen (Germany), whose age is determined in the interval from 360 000 to 420 000 years. Well, the very same ancient spears with obsidian tips (or rather spear tips!) Were found in Gademotta in Ethiopia. Their age is 280 000 years. However, today there are finds and older. For example, in 2012, in the Cape Province in South Africa, 13 immediately found stone blades, which, according to archaeologists, represent spearheads. But their age is already 500 000 years or something like that.
Image of a hunter in front of a bison. Lasko cave. Dordogne. France
The findings in Gademote should be described in more detail, since this area today is an ancient mountain range towering above one of the four lakes of the rift valley located there - the exceptionally picturesque lake Zivay. Approximately 125 – 780 thousands of years ago a large “megaozero” was poured here, which included all four modern reservoirs and where paleontologists found numerous remains of ancient antelopes and hippopotamuses and ... what is the most valuable - 141 spear tip from obsidian.
Findings involved Professor Yonatan Zale of the University of California, who drew attention to their characteristic damage. It turns out that at the moment of impact, V-shaped cracks appear on the obsidian plates. Vertex “V” marks the point from which the cracks propagate in different directions. It was noted that the “wings” of “V” is not narrower, the higher the rate of formation of cracks in obsidian. For some tips, it exceeded 80 m / s, while for others it was about 1,5 m / s. That is, it turns out that in the first case a spear with a tip flew into the target after being thrown, and in the second case, the object of the hunt was simply struck by it. And Jean Awel just emphasizes that her heroes, who belonged to the Neanderthals, run after the animals and hit him. They also have a peculiar sporting competition - “jogging with lances”, during which you have to reach the target first and hit it with a javelin.
Here it is, an ancient processed stone, from which our civilization began. Dordogne, France.
But this is a book, albeit very interestingly written. In fact, it has long been clear that the invention of throwing weapons became a giant step in stories of humanity. Having learned to throw a spear at a target, a man was given the opportunity not to get close to a dangerous animal, but to hit him from afar. Prior to this discovery, it was believed that throwing weapons appeared about 60 – 100 thousands of years ago. And the reason was to think so. An ancient dart was found, whose age was determined in 80 for thousands of years. Then came the bow, arrows and spear thrower (atlatl). And it seemed to be logical that all this was thought up by the Man of Reasonable, for it is much more difficult to make a good throwing weapon than a piercing-cutting one. But new finds suggest that, apparently, darts used not only Cro-Magnon men, considered to be our immediate ancestors, but also representatives of some other, obviously more ancient African population of Homo. Hall decided that the most ancient darts is a creation of the Heidelberg man, and that he is the most likely ancestor of the Man of Reasonable and, again, the same Neanderthals.
Spearheads and stone axes. Museum of Anatolian civilization. Ankara, Turkey.
It is clear that most likely we will never know where Homo sapiens came from. Our ancestors themselves invented it or borrowed from someone. It is more important to know that 200 – 300 thousands of years ago in the evolution of man, new anatomical features and obviously more complex tools appeared, which indicates the improvement of his thinking. It is possible that it was then that people started talking. And you should not pay special attention to the fact that this find was made in Ethiopia. A throwing spear could have appeared almost anywhere. More importantly, even then the ancient people could quite successfully fight at a distance! But they still did not always use stone tips! So, the spears of the Australian aborigines still represent a simple pointed stick! In 1779, in the Hawaiian Islands, where Captain James Cook died, a trophy was taken in a battle with the islanders - a wooden spear with a harpooned tip. And in the Solomon Islands used bone tips. So here the man's imagination literally knew no bounds and used everything that was suitable for him at hand.
The decoration of the spear. British museum. London.
That is, if we assume that the painting of the same Lascaux cave in France most likely belongs in the 18th millennium BC, then ... the latest scientific data show that by this time throwing spears with stone tips were already the most widespread, although yes - we cannot judge this on the basis of hunting paintings in ancient caves. Well, the fact that the earliest spears were just sharpened sticks we can judge, if only because this is the simplest weapon that you can think of. And if tips from throwing copies were found, then before them, of course, spears were used exclusively for percussion and the very first of them could not have any tips, logically, but only a primitive point and no more!
A shot from the movie “A Million Years BC” (1966). Here, it turns out, what then were the beauties. By the way, it's all downright to Jean Auell - well, poured Aila from the cycle of her novels "Children of Earth".
As for the novels and images created by Jean M. Auele, with all the merits of her works, she still somewhat overwhelmed them, firstly, with too many descriptions of the sexual life of the Stone Age people, in some places, quite obviously redundant. Well, and secondly - their tolerance and peacefulness in her are clearly excessive.
Bison struck by a spear. Drawing on the wall in the cave Left Bank. Sablino.
Although, the fact that in those days the weapon was still rarely directed against people is most likely true. But the reason for this was hidden not in the high moral qualities of the people of that time, but in the fact that the human tribes themselves were very few. According to some reports, the population density in the late Paleolithic era was 1 people per 20 square kilometers. Human teams then reached an average of 40 people, and indeed there were very few people on the globe. For example, it is believed that by the late Paleolithic era, the population of the earth was about three million people. But even if we assume that they were several times larger, the struggle for “living space” most likely was still very, very far away. Separate bloody clashes between people, of course, took place, since even now they are far from angels, and at that time they did not know the commandments of God, nor did they learn the catechism at school!
The truth in the works of J. I. Roni the Sr. and Jean M. Auell, that is, the beginning and end of the twentieth century, lies, as always, somewhere in the middle. However, ethnographic materials also show that people preferred to settle conflicts in the early stages of human history with peace. If peace could not be achieved, then for the military solution of the conflict, special fighters were elected, and the fights themselves between them were held according to certain rules, which both sides had to strictly adhere to. Well, and if the total fight was inevitable, they again agreed, how and how much to fight, about the maximum amount of losses, the party that suffered them would have to recognize themselves defeated and subsequently pay tribute to the winners. Of course, we cannot assert with absolute precision that all these customs also existed at the dawn of human history. Although on the other hand, why not ?! However, if we are talking about some kind of evidence, then ... picturesque images of those distant years clearly tell us only about hunting for animals, but the dead people, like living ones, for some reason, are practically absent!
A spear tip found during excavations at Buttermilk Creek in Texas.
However, all the time there are new finds. For example, archaeologists from the University of Texas during the excavations at Buttermilk Creek in Texas managed to find stone spear tips, which are 15,5 thousand years old. It would seem that there was something more ancient here, but in this case it’s important that scientists believed that the first people appeared in North America 11 – 11,5 thousands of years ago. They belonged to the so-called Clovis culture. But now it is clear that the settlement of the North American continent took place even earlier!
And this is part of the rest of the findings made by scientists at the University of Texas.
Interestingly, during the excavations we found around 100 thousands of various stone artifacts, and among them 12 spearheads with ages from 13,5 to 15,5 thousand years. However, it is not yet possible to say whether the people of the Clovis culture are descendants of this group or not? And were there two people who migrated to North America with an interval of several millennia, groups of people or was it one group, but simply settled in different territories. So the study of our past continues successfully, and even the tips of spears made of stone help in this!
Image of a hunter in front of a bison. Lasko cave. Dordogne. France
The findings in Gademote should be described in more detail, since this area today is an ancient mountain range towering above one of the four lakes of the rift valley located there - the exceptionally picturesque lake Zivay. Approximately 125 – 780 thousands of years ago a large “megaozero” was poured here, which included all four modern reservoirs and where paleontologists found numerous remains of ancient antelopes and hippopotamuses and ... what is the most valuable - 141 spear tip from obsidian.
Findings involved Professor Yonatan Zale of the University of California, who drew attention to their characteristic damage. It turns out that at the moment of impact, V-shaped cracks appear on the obsidian plates. Vertex “V” marks the point from which the cracks propagate in different directions. It was noted that the “wings” of “V” is not narrower, the higher the rate of formation of cracks in obsidian. For some tips, it exceeded 80 m / s, while for others it was about 1,5 m / s. That is, it turns out that in the first case a spear with a tip flew into the target after being thrown, and in the second case, the object of the hunt was simply struck by it. And Jean Awel just emphasizes that her heroes, who belonged to the Neanderthals, run after the animals and hit him. They also have a peculiar sporting competition - “jogging with lances”, during which you have to reach the target first and hit it with a javelin.
Here it is, an ancient processed stone, from which our civilization began. Dordogne, France.
But this is a book, albeit very interestingly written. In fact, it has long been clear that the invention of throwing weapons became a giant step in stories of humanity. Having learned to throw a spear at a target, a man was given the opportunity not to get close to a dangerous animal, but to hit him from afar. Prior to this discovery, it was believed that throwing weapons appeared about 60 – 100 thousands of years ago. And the reason was to think so. An ancient dart was found, whose age was determined in 80 for thousands of years. Then came the bow, arrows and spear thrower (atlatl). And it seemed to be logical that all this was thought up by the Man of Reasonable, for it is much more difficult to make a good throwing weapon than a piercing-cutting one. But new finds suggest that, apparently, darts used not only Cro-Magnon men, considered to be our immediate ancestors, but also representatives of some other, obviously more ancient African population of Homo. Hall decided that the most ancient darts is a creation of the Heidelberg man, and that he is the most likely ancestor of the Man of Reasonable and, again, the same Neanderthals.
Spearheads and stone axes. Museum of Anatolian civilization. Ankara, Turkey.
It is clear that most likely we will never know where Homo sapiens came from. Our ancestors themselves invented it or borrowed from someone. It is more important to know that 200 – 300 thousands of years ago in the evolution of man, new anatomical features and obviously more complex tools appeared, which indicates the improvement of his thinking. It is possible that it was then that people started talking. And you should not pay special attention to the fact that this find was made in Ethiopia. A throwing spear could have appeared almost anywhere. More importantly, even then the ancient people could quite successfully fight at a distance! But they still did not always use stone tips! So, the spears of the Australian aborigines still represent a simple pointed stick! In 1779, in the Hawaiian Islands, where Captain James Cook died, a trophy was taken in a battle with the islanders - a wooden spear with a harpooned tip. And in the Solomon Islands used bone tips. So here the man's imagination literally knew no bounds and used everything that was suitable for him at hand.
The decoration of the spear. British museum. London.
That is, if we assume that the painting of the same Lascaux cave in France most likely belongs in the 18th millennium BC, then ... the latest scientific data show that by this time throwing spears with stone tips were already the most widespread, although yes - we cannot judge this on the basis of hunting paintings in ancient caves. Well, the fact that the earliest spears were just sharpened sticks we can judge, if only because this is the simplest weapon that you can think of. And if tips from throwing copies were found, then before them, of course, spears were used exclusively for percussion and the very first of them could not have any tips, logically, but only a primitive point and no more!
A shot from the movie “A Million Years BC” (1966). Here, it turns out, what then were the beauties. By the way, it's all downright to Jean Auell - well, poured Aila from the cycle of her novels "Children of Earth".
As for the novels and images created by Jean M. Auele, with all the merits of her works, she still somewhat overwhelmed them, firstly, with too many descriptions of the sexual life of the Stone Age people, in some places, quite obviously redundant. Well, and secondly - their tolerance and peacefulness in her are clearly excessive.
Bison struck by a spear. Drawing on the wall in the cave Left Bank. Sablino.
Although, the fact that in those days the weapon was still rarely directed against people is most likely true. But the reason for this was hidden not in the high moral qualities of the people of that time, but in the fact that the human tribes themselves were very few. According to some reports, the population density in the late Paleolithic era was 1 people per 20 square kilometers. Human teams then reached an average of 40 people, and indeed there were very few people on the globe. For example, it is believed that by the late Paleolithic era, the population of the earth was about three million people. But even if we assume that they were several times larger, the struggle for “living space” most likely was still very, very far away. Separate bloody clashes between people, of course, took place, since even now they are far from angels, and at that time they did not know the commandments of God, nor did they learn the catechism at school!
The truth in the works of J. I. Roni the Sr. and Jean M. Auell, that is, the beginning and end of the twentieth century, lies, as always, somewhere in the middle. However, ethnographic materials also show that people preferred to settle conflicts in the early stages of human history with peace. If peace could not be achieved, then for the military solution of the conflict, special fighters were elected, and the fights themselves between them were held according to certain rules, which both sides had to strictly adhere to. Well, and if the total fight was inevitable, they again agreed, how and how much to fight, about the maximum amount of losses, the party that suffered them would have to recognize themselves defeated and subsequently pay tribute to the winners. Of course, we cannot assert with absolute precision that all these customs also existed at the dawn of human history. Although on the other hand, why not ?! However, if we are talking about some kind of evidence, then ... picturesque images of those distant years clearly tell us only about hunting for animals, but the dead people, like living ones, for some reason, are practically absent!
A spear tip found during excavations at Buttermilk Creek in Texas.
However, all the time there are new finds. For example, archaeologists from the University of Texas during the excavations at Buttermilk Creek in Texas managed to find stone spear tips, which are 15,5 thousand years old. It would seem that there was something more ancient here, but in this case it’s important that scientists believed that the first people appeared in North America 11 – 11,5 thousands of years ago. They belonged to the so-called Clovis culture. But now it is clear that the settlement of the North American continent took place even earlier!
And this is part of the rest of the findings made by scientists at the University of Texas.
Interestingly, during the excavations we found around 100 thousands of various stone artifacts, and among them 12 spearheads with ages from 13,5 to 15,5 thousand years. However, it is not yet possible to say whether the people of the Clovis culture are descendants of this group or not? And were there two people who migrated to North America with an interval of several millennia, groups of people or was it one group, but simply settled in different territories. So the study of our past continues successfully, and even the tips of spears made of stone help in this!
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