So throwing spears...

They vanish from the archaeological record for like
300,000 years. Some claim it's a mere 200,000 years
that they disappear for, but if 200,000 years is so
insignificant then why are all the elitist douche bags
that own paleo anthropology trying to add that much
time to the appearance of modern humans?

Anyway, there were throwing spears. Throwing spears
were a thing. Then they were gone and they stayed gone
for hundreds of thousands of years.

Why?

There's two answers, and by that I mean three. They are..

#1. Artifact of preservation.

It's damn difficult to get ANY amount of wood to preserve
for that long, much less a representative sampling. So
maybe the mystery here isn't why throwing spears vanish
but why any throwing spears managed to preserve at all?

If any part of a spear shaft managed to survive at all, and
the odds say it won't, chances are we could tell that it even
was a spear shaft -- as opposed to a back scratcher, axe
or knife handle, tooth pick (etc) -- much less what type of
spear.

So maybe the odds against preservation were so great
that plenty existed but none survived.

#2. Human conflict

Originally I favored this idea, and it was only exchanges
in this group. driving me to "Research" the matter, as far
as Google is research, that convinced me otherwise...

In this explanation, competition with other humans, and
this includes other Neanderthals, forced them to abandon
throwing spears.

A MAN WHO THROWS HIS SPEAR DISARMS HIMSELF!

As has been established in the past with cites, experts
on the longbow will tell you that a man who knows he's
being shot at can have a fairly easy time dodging an
arrow and even pretty close ranges. A spear is even
easier.

The longbow against a MASS of soldiers was ferocious
but one on one, your enemy facing you, you're not going
to hit him. Switch to a spear and even a Stephan Hawking
could've dodged one...

#3. They found something better

This is the idea that I now favor.

So in this theory, they switched from throwing spears to
stabbing spears because stabbing spears were better. Once
the perfected ambush hunting, that is.

It's pretty simple, working like this: Instead of chucking a
spear at "Center Mass," hoping for a hit, and then hoping
you can find where this animal ran off to before finally
succumbing to it's wounds, providing it did succumb, you
ambush it.

With ambush hunting, you find a game trail. This could be
leading to a water source or liar, whatever, but you find one
of these. Next, you follow it looking for a tree positioned
to offer you a great advantage, a limb right next to or over
the trail...

NOTE: Not entirely necessary. Some "Ambush" hunters
even today will hide on the ground, like in Brush, and
ambush an animal that comes near. But the tree makes
things safer, particularly if you're going after a predator.

FINALLY, when the animal strolls beneath you, you plunge
the spear down into it, actually being able to aim at
specific points.

Unlike throwing spears.

With a proper spear, aimed for a vulnerable point, death
occurs in seconds. Not minutes, seconds.

I have seen more than one video of someone (a modern
sports hunter) taking out a bear with this method. It is
very effective. If you can mask your scent and/or lure
your prey in with some type of bait, it is an extremely
efficient, low intensity method of killing even a large,
dangerous animal.

P.S. This more perfect INLAND form of hunting would
follow throwing spears because throwing spears came
first.

Sort of.

Optimizing a spear for the water, spear fishing, produces
the perfect throwing spear. So it's only the later inland
population, the one that split off and adapted to the
dry land, that needs the thrusting spears...

::Discuss::

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