• some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 months ago

    The grooves carved into each point could allow it to slide down the shaft upon impact. A fixed point, by contrast, would be more likely to shatter when it hit dense material, especially bone.

    This is really interesting. And to further illustrate just how much we have no idea and might be wildly wrong, there’s an incredible book, All Yesterdays, which reimagines prehistoric animals in interesting new ways. The second half of the book shows possible recreations of contemporary animals based solely on their skeletons to really drive home the point at how much guessing is involved in this field. Some of the images can be found here.

    This is a rhino skeleton (wtf):

  • RicoBerto@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 months ago

    Pikes were used much the same way right? Surprised I never put the two together, ancient humans weren’t stupid so of course they’d realize that was a better way of causing harm than just throwing it. Not to mention their use of leverage in weapons like the Atlatl. No clue on the timespan of these things but I do find this stuff interesting.

  • Num10ck@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    i remember reading how eskimos would wrap sharp bone fragments in balls of fat and leave them for polar bears… then they would follow the bears until they died of internal bleeding.

    elephants are much smarter than bears though.

    • 4lan@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      that is such a grimy way to hunt lol. basically poisoning without the risk eating the meat

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It’s the arctic and a polar bear. Is it fair? Well it’s about as fair as fishing. And if they don’t do either they’ll see how fair starving on a block of ice is

        • 4lan@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Maybe people shouldn’t be living there if they can’t survive without poisoning their prey

            • 4lan@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              The same reason people shouldn’t be living in Arizona and expecting other states to divert their water to them. There is no water there you shouldn’t live there. No one is forcing anyone to live there

              Just live in a habitable climate there are so many. Just live in a biome with plentiful game, there are many

              • Ashelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                2 months ago

                The Inuit/Eskimos are some of the more self-sustaining peoples on the planet. They don’t depend much on imports from elsewhere, at least not to my knowledge. They had to figure out many adaptations for the area but they make it work and have done so for a long time.

                To compare them with a city representing the pinnacle of mankind’s hubris is a bit of a reach imo

    • 🔍🦘🛎@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      So if the theory is that spears were planted in the ground rather than thrown, that means there was probably a ton of them in the ground and mammoths were chased into the trap.

      • Shanedino@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Planted in the ground could mean that they were left free standing or that they held the backend against the ground whilst holding onto it still.

  • Redfox8@mander.xyz
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    2 months ago

    Makes sense, use the prey’s weight and momentum to do the hard work, rather than the relativly feable arm of a much smaller creature!

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 months ago

      Many people have a silly idea in their heads that stone-age humans could not be as innovative and smart as we can because their technology was less advanced than ours.

      They also look at an expertly-knapped spearhead like the ones in the thumbnail and think they could do that with a couple of rocks they find in their backyard.

      These ancestors of ours were smart, they were creative thinkers, they made stone tools at an expert level that the average person today could not even hope to replicate. I love finding out new ways they were able to innovate.

      • ferret@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Modern society has existed in a flash on an evolutionary timescale, it’s likely that our ancient ancestors were exactly as “smart” as we are