PRIMAL PREY WEAPONS PROFESSIONAL

'A more substantial wound induced by a stone-tipped spear is likely to slow it down and reduce the distance it can run before ultimately collapsing-increasing the hunter's chances of retrieving the fallen prey. On the other hand, a middle-sized animal like a deer is much more difficult to trap, and if hit by a wooden spear it will probably run away.' Ben-Dor adds that 'studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers indicate that a wooden spear is quite sufficient for hunting large prey like an elephant: the hunters first limit the animal's mobility-for example by driving it into a swamp or digging a trapping pit and concealing it with branches-then thrust the spear into the prey and wait for it to bleed. 'We found that in all cases, at all sites, stone tips made with the Levallois technology appeared simultaneously with a relative decrease in the quantity of bones of large prey.

Specifically, we examined the emergence of a sophisticated stone-knapping method known as the Levallois technique, which is especially indicative of cognitive development: unlike earlier knapping methods, here the craftsman first prepares a core of good-quality stone, then cuts a pointed item off with one stroke-a process that requires him/her to imagine the final outcome in advance.' 'In this study we looked for a correlation between the advent of stone-tipped spears, and the progressive decline in prey size. The bones reflect the relative quantities of different species hunted by humans, such as elephants, fallow deer, etc.' In early archaeological sites of this kind, we find mostly animal bones and stone tools used to hunt and process prey. Ben-Dor says 'In the present study we analyzed findings from nine prehistoric sites-in South Africa, East Africa, Spain, and France, inhabited during the transition from the Lower to the Middle Stone Age (Paleolithic), about 300,000 years ago, when Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens first emerged. The paper was published in Quaternary.ĭr. Ran Barkai from the Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University.

PRIMAL PREY WEAPONS PROFESSIONAL

'So far such a unified hypothesis was lacking in professional literature, with the prevailing hypothesis maintaining that the changes in hunting weapons were a reflection of an essentially unexplained cognitive improvement.' The hypothesis explains the cultural and physiological evolution of prehistoric humans-including increased cognitive abilities-as an adaptational response to the need to hunt progressively smaller and quicker prey.'

The researchers explain, 'This study was designed to examine a broader unifying hypothesis, which we proposed in a previous paper published in 2021.

Primal prey weapons