Basic Weapons: History & Evolution

[ramonmercado]

Oldest evidence of arrows found

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News

Arrow heads (Image: M Lombard/Antiquity) The stone points are approximately 64,000 years old

Researchers in South Africa have revealed the earliest direct evidence of human-made arrows.

The scientists unearthed 64,000 year-old "stone points", which they say were probably arrow heads.

Closer inspection of the ancient weapons revealed remnants of blood and bone that provided clues about how they were used.

The team report their findings in the journal Antiquity.

The arrow heads were excavated from layers of ancient sediment in Sibudu Cave in South Africa. They dug through layers deposited up to 100,000 years ago.

Marlize Lombard from the University of Johannesburg, who led the research, described the approach she and her team took as "stone age forensics".

"We took the [points] directly from the site, in little [plastic] baggies, to the lab," she told BBC News.

"Then I started the tedious work of analysing them [under the microscope], looking at the distribution patterns of blood and bone residues."

Because of the shape of these "little geometric pieces", Dr Lombard was able to see exactly where they had been impacted and damaged. This showed that they peices were very likely to have been the tips of projectiles - rather than sharp points on the end of hand-held spears.
Micrographs of ancient stone arrow heads (Image: M Lombard/ Antiquity) Closer inspection revealed remnants of blood (left) and bone fragments (right)

The arrow heads also contained traces of glue - plant-based resin that the scientists think was used to fasten them on to a wooden shaft.

"The presence of glue implies that people were able to produce composite tools - tools where different elements produced from different materials are glued together to make a single artefact," said Dr Lombard.

"This is an indicator of a cognitively demanding behaviour."

The discovery pushes back the development of "bow and arrow technology" by at least 20,000 years.
Ancient engineering

Researchers are interested in early evidence of bow and arrows, as this type of weapons engineering shows the coginitive abilties of humans living at that time.
Sibudu Cave, South Africa (Image: Marlize Lombard) The arrows were excavated from Sibudu Cave in South Africa

The researchers wrote in their paper: "Hunting with a bow and arrow requires intricate multi-staged planning, material collection and tool preparation and implies a range of innovative social and communication skills."

Dr Lombard explained that her ultimate aim was to answer the "big question": When did we start to think in the same way that we do now?

"We can now start being more and more confident that 60-70,000 years ago, in Southern Africa, people were behaving, on a cognitive level, very similarly to us," she told BBC News.
Map of South Africa indicating position of Sibudu Cave

Professor Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London said the work added to the view that modern humans in Africa 60,000 years ago had begun to hunt in a "new way".

Neanderthals and other early humans, he explained, were likely to have been "ambush predators", who needed to get close to their prey in order to dispatch them.

Professor Stringer said: "This work further extends the advanced behaviours inferred for early modern people in Africa."

"But the long gaps in the subsequent record of bows and arrows may mean that regular use of these weapons did not come until much later.

"Indeed, the concept of bows and arrows may even have had to be reinvented many millennia [later]."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11086110

 

[rynner2]

The early development of weapons and tools is a fascinating subject.

Did the spear come before arrows?

Did fire come before arrows? Because, even to this day there are people who use a bow to turn a 'drill', and the friction at the drill-tip creates heat and then fire. Once you have a bow, your mind might turn to other uses for it...

 

[Quake42]

Did the spear come before arrows?

My understanding is that the bow and arrow developed from "spear throwers" - so the spear came first.

 

[PeniG]

This is really startling, as the logical progression - and that shown in the record up to now- is:

Hand-held spears
Thrown spears
Darts on atlatls (spear throwers, but the spears can be complex, with exchangeable points, so you don't have to make a whole new spear from scratch every time your point breaks or is unretrievable)
Bows and arrows
Atlatls and darts are efficient, versatile, and relatively easy to make; so it can be millenia before anybody feels the need to invent the bow and arrow.

I don't know that there's any necessary atlatl step in the invention of the bow, as they don't work mechanically the same way. The principle of the atlatl is to increase the strength, range, and velocity of a throw by extending the effective length of the arm. The bow achieves the same result in a way that operates differently, as far as I can tell, though the underlying mechanics may be the same. So independent invention in a culture that has not developed the atlatl is conceivable.

Spears and darts are most effective on large game, but any culture specializing in small game can use slings and nets, which is still a lot simpler than inventing the bow and arrow. So this is all a little mind-boggling. I await developments with interest.

 

[ramonmercado]

Women could have been the first humans to use weapons to hunt. An analysis of spear-wielding chimps, most of which are females, suggests the idea may not be as eccentric as it might sound.

In 2007, Jill Pruetz from Iowa State University in Ames discovered that chimps in Fongoli, Senegal, thrust sharpened sticks into nest holes in trees

to stab or club small, nocturnal primates called bushbabies. Pruetz and her team observed 308 such hunts up until 2014. Females carried out 61 per cent of them, despite making up only 39 per cent of the chimps in hunting parties.

The Fongoli chimps are still the only ones known to use weapons to kill or wound prey, even though chimps elsewhere in Africa – again mainly females – use tools to get at termites and tubers. Pruetz suspects that may be because the Fongoli band is much more cooperative than most, so female hunters are less likely to lose their kill to a bigger male. "There's no incentive to hunt if you're going to have your prey stolen," she says. ...

http://www.newscientist.com/article...neered-hunting-with-weapons.html#.VS5jPfmha3w

 

[McAvennie]

Surely smashing someone over the head with a rock came before using bow/arrow or spear.

 

[ramonmercado]

Surely smashing someone over the head with a rock came before using bow/arrow or spear.

Indeed. Proving earliest use of such weapons may be more problematical.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Surely smashing someone over the head with a rock came before using bow/arrow or spear.

Exactly. I'm sure the first weapon was a crude club, as depicted in the opening ape-men scenario in 2001 A Space Odyssey.

 

[Schwadevivre]

Surely smashing someone over the head with a rock came before using bow/arrow or spear

Surely, using a stone hammer to crack nuts and bones for bone marrow came first.

 

[ramonmercado]

Surely, using a stone hammer to crack nuts and bones for bone marrow came first.

But thats not use of weapons.

 

[Monstrosa]

Crack nuts, crack skulls, what's the difference?

 

[McAvennie]

But thats not use of weapons.

Depends what type of nuts it is.

 

[Monstrosa]

The difference between cracking nuts and cracking skulls is intent. The earliest weapons were likely to have been simple sticks and stones, used to bludgeon one's enemy or prey.

 

[ramonmercado]

The difference between cracking nuts and cracking skulls is intent. The earliest weapons were likely to have been simple sticks and stones, used to bludgeon one's enemy or prey.

Yes, the earliest weapons were likely to be sticks and stones, but technology developed.

 

[Monstrosa]

Evidence of 430,000-year-old human violence found

Human remains from a cave in northern Spain show evidence of a lethal attack 430,000 years ago, a study has shown.

Researchers examined one skull from a site called the Pit of Bones, which contains the remains of at least 28 people.

They concluded that two fractures on that skull were likely to have been caused by "multiple blows" and imply "an intention to kill".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32890697

 

[maximus otter]

How do you solve a Stone Age murder mystery? First, identify the weapon.

Archaeologists in the United Kingdom are turning to forensic methods to understand violence in the Neolithic period.

In experiments described in the journal Antiquity yesterday (Dec. 7), researchers used a replica of a 5,500-year-old wooden club to see what kind of damage they could inflict on a model of a human head. They found that such clubs were indeed lethal weapons.

Archaeologists have found ample evidence of violence in Western and Central Europe during the Neolithic period, through burials of people who had skull fractures—some healed, some were fatal —from an intentional blow to the head. But it was often unclear where these injuries came from.

"No one was trying to identify why there was blunt-force trauma in the period," said study leader Meaghan Dyer, a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh. "We realized we needed to start looking at weapons."

Dyer and her supervisor Linda Fibigerturned to synthetic skull models that are designed for ballistics tests for guns. These skulls consisted of a rubber skinwrapped around a polyurethane, bone-like shell that was filled with gelatin to simulate the brain.

Dyer wanted to see how these artificial human heads would hold up after getting bashed by a replica of a Neolithic wooden club found known as the Thames beater:

Wood typically does not preserve well in the archaeological record, but the Thames beater was pulled out of the waterlogged soil on the north bank of the Thames River in the Chelsea area of London. It has been carbon dated to 3530-3340 B.C. and is now housed in the Museum of London. Dyer described the club as a "very badly made cricket bat" that's much heavier at the tip.

Dyer enlisted a friend, a 30-year-old man in good health, to do the bashing, and told him to swing as hard as he could at the "skulls," as if he were in a battle for his life. The resulting fractures resembled injuries seen in the real Neolithic skulls. One fracture pattern closely matched a skull from the 5200 B.C. massacre site of Asparn/Schletz in Austria, where archaeologists had previously speculated that wooden clubs might have been used as weapons.

"We didn't go out aiming to replicate a particular injury, and when we got that fracture pattern, we were quite excited," Dyer said. "We knew right away that we had a match there."

Rick Schulting, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the study, added that the findings "are relevant to any period in which wooden clubs are used as weapons to inflict harm." The researchers had also found that direct blows can result in linear fractures, and previously, such fractures had usually been attributed to falls, Schulting said. He added that this finding "may lead us to revisit some cases that were previously discounted as evidence of violence."

https://www.livescience.com/61140-prehistoric-wooden-club-weapons.html

maximus otter

 

[James_H]

If they didn't work, I don't know why they would have bothered making them in the first place.

 

[Cochise]

I'm not sure I understand. Why would you make a club unless you were going to use it as a weapon? And we know well enough a wooden club is an effective weapon because among other things we used to equip our police with them?

Am I paying for this research? If so I want a refund.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I'm not sure I understand. Why would you make a club unless you were going to use it as a weapon? ...

Perhaps it was a specialized derivation of an ordinary tool that had proven useful as a surrogate weapon in the past.

The general form of the artifact isn't all that different from a wooden tool for (e.g.) pounding or hammering.

 

[Shadowsot]

The point of the study was to see if this sort of weapon caused the wounds we have been seeing. Since this is apparently the only example we've found. And the recreations match the wounds found on remains.
The title is a little no **** Sherlock, but that's what they were looking at.

 

[skinny]

I never leave home without my shillelagh when camping. Got a nice piece of native limb with the right density of branch at the lopped bend for the knocker. It'll double as my walking stick once I reach my dotage proper. A wee peacemaker for those special moments when words just aren't enough.

 

[maximus otter]

I never leave home without my shillelagh...

l’ve long wanted a proper shillelagh. Every time l notice a blackthorn a small part of my mind tells me to go home and return with my saw and hatchet.

If l’d acted on this impulse, l’d have bundles of well-seasoned wood; enough for a veritable fascine of fighting sticks.

maximus otter

 

[skinny]

Very wise. I only ever gather the fallen limbs. I section out tons of fallen eucalyptus each year for the chiminea, and every now and then a new friend announces itself and is saved for a higher purpose.

 

[Cochise]

Well, the Thames club - the real one - looks remarkably like a baseball bat. And it shouldn't be hard to find out what sort of fractures a baseball bat causes, since they have been used to murder people.

I daresay it could also be used to bash other things - it doesn't prove it was made for war - nor if it was made for violence does it preclude other uses - maybe they played rounders as well.

It seems to me that modern academics have become so specialised they can no longer identify with a less complex world.

Edit - for that matter it might be a big ladle and his wife bashed him over the head with it

 

[EnolaGaia]

New discoveries represent the oldest known evidence of bow-and-arrow technology outside of Africa. The evidence is circa 50,000 years old, and it was found in Sri Lanka.

Oldest Arrowheads Outside of Africa Have Been Found in The Rainforests of Sri Lanka

Archaeological excavations deep within the rainforests of Sri Lanka have unearthed the earliest evidence for hunting with bows and arrows outside Africa.

At Fa-Hien Lena, a cave in the heart of Sri Lanka's wet zone forests, we discovered numerous tools made of stone, bone, and tooth – including a number of small arrow points carved from bone which are about 48,000 years old.

When was the bow and arrow invented?

The invention of the bow and arrow allowed people to hunt prey at a much greater distance. People no longer had to get within "a stone's throw" of prey which could suddenly bolt and escape. This innovation greatly increased the chances of a successful hunt.

Bows and arrows also made it much safer to hunt dangerous prey. If you don't have to get too close, you're less likely to be trampled or mauled by a hurt and angry animal.

The origin of the bow and arrow is one of the great mysteries of human technological innovation. How did it come about? When? Where? And why?

Currently, the oldest evidence for the use of the bow and arrow are small stone points found in Sibudu cave in South Africa, which are some 64,000 years old.

Outside Africa, the oldest finds were previously pieces of bows found in Germany dating back no more than 18,000 years.

Because bows and arrows are mainly made from highly perishable stuff like wood, sinew, and fibres, they don't leave a lot of evidence behind for archaeologists to find. So the small bone points recovered from Fa-Hien Lena are an important discovery.

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/sri-la...e-for-bow-and-arrow-hunting-outside-of-africa

See Also:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/clues-earliest-known-bow-arrow-hunting-outside-africa-found

 

[ramonmercado]

Perhaps this is the oldest evidence of the use of bows and arrows outside of Africa.

Homo sapiens who reached Europe around 54,000 years ago introduced bows and arrows to that continent, a new study suggests.

Researchers examined tiny triangular stone points and other artifacts excavated at a rock-shelter in southern France called Grotte Mandrin. H. sapiens on the move probably brought archery techniques from Africa to Europe, archaeologist Laure Metz of Aix-Marseille University in France and colleagues report February 22 in Science Advances.

“Metz and colleagues demonstrate bow hunting [at Grotte Mandrin] as convincingly as possible without being caught bow-in-hand,” says archaeologist Marlize Lombard of the University of Johannesburg, who did not participate in the new study.

No bows were found at the site. Wooden items such as bows preserve poorly. The oldest intact bows, found in northern European bogs, date to around 11,000 years ago, Metz says.

Previous stone and bone point discoveries suggest that bow-and-arrow hunting originated in Africa between about 80,000 and 60,000 years ago. And previously recovered fossil teeth indicate that H. sapiens visited Grotte Mandrin as early as 56,800 years ago, well before Neandertals’ demise around 40,000 years ago and much earlier than researchers had thought that H. sapiens first reached Europe (SN: 2/9/22).

“We’ve shown that the earliest known Homo sapiens to migrate into Neandertal territories had mastered the use of the bow,” Metz says.

No evidence suggests that Neandertals already present in Europe at that time launched arrows at prey. It’s also unclear whether archery provided any substantial hunting advantages to H. sapiens relative to spears that were thrust or thrown by Neandertals.

Among 852 stone artifacts excavated in a H. sapiens sediment layer at Grotte Mandrin dated to about 54,000 years ago, 196 triangular stone points displayed high-impact damage. Another 15 stone points showed signs of both high-impact damage and alterations caused by butchery activities, such as cutting. ...

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/homo-sapiens-archery-europe-neandertal

 

[ramonmercado]

Carefully crafted throwing sticks.

A 300,000-year-old hunting weapon has shone a new light on early humans as woodworking masters, according to a new study.

State-of-the-art analysis of a double-pointed wooden throwing stick, found in Schöningen in Germany three decades ago, shows it was scraped, seasoned and sanded before being used to kill animals. The research indicates early humans' woodworking techniques were more developed and sophisticated than previously understood.

The findings, published today in PLOS ONE, also suggest the creation of lightweight weapons may have enabled group hunts of medium and small animals. The use of throwing sticks as hunting aids could have involved the entire community, including children.

Dr. Annemieke Milks, of the University of Reading's Department of Archaeology, led the research. She said, "Discoveries of wooden tools have revolutionized our understanding of early human behaviors. Amazingly these early humans demonstrated an ability to plan well in advance, a strong knowledge of the properties of wood, and many sophisticated woodworking skills that we still use today."

"These lightweight throwing sticks may have been easier to launch than heavier spears, indicating the potential for the whole community to take part. Such tools could have been used by children while learning to throw and hunt." ...

https://phys.org/news/2023-07-early-humans-weapon-woodwork-experts.html

 

[ramonmercado]

Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear ...

Excavations on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have uncovered two unique and deadly artifacts dating back some 7,000 years—tiger shark teeth that were used as blades.

These finds, reported in the journal Antiquity, are some of the earliest archaeological evidence globally for the use of shark teeth in composite weapons—weapons made with multiple parts. Until now, the oldest such shark-tooth blades found were less than 5,000 years old.

Our international team used a combination of scientific analysis, experimental reproduction and observations of recent human communities to determine that the two modified shark teeth had once been attached to handles as blades. They were most likely used in ritual or warfare.

The two shark teeth were recovered during excavations as part of a joint Indonesian-Australian archaeological research program. Both specimens were found in archaeological contexts attributed to the Toalean culture—an enigmatic foraging society that lived in southwestern Sulawesi from around 8,000 years ago until an unknown period in the recent past.

The shark teeth are of a similar size and came from tiger sharks (Galeocerda cuvier) that were approximately two meters long. Both teeth are perforated.

A complete tooth, found at the cave site of Leang Panninge, has two holes drilled through the root. The other—found at a cave called Leang Bulu' Sipong 1—has one hole, though is broken and likely originally also had two holes.

Microscopic examination of the teeth found they had once been tightly fixed to a handle using plant-based threads and a glue-like substance. The adhesive used was a combination of mineral, plant and animal materials.

The same method of attachment is seen on modern shark-tooth blades used by cultures throughout the Pacific.

Examination of the edges of each tooth found they had been used to pierce, cut and scrape flesh and bone. However, far more damage was present than a shark would naturally accrue during feeding.

While these residues superficially suggest Toalean people were using shark-tooth knives as everyday cutting implements, ethnographic (observations of recent communities), archaeological and experimental data suggest otherwise.

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-shark-knife-year-old-shark-tooth-knives.html