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posted by martyb on Sunday February 03 2019, @07:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the YOU-try-sneaking-up-and-stabbing-a-wild-animal dept.

Archaeologist Annemieke Milks' recently published study, albeit done in 2015, suggests that some extinct hominids probably didn't just stab prey from a close distance, but may have also occasionally threw spears. The study had a group of athletes, particularly strong javelin throwers, throw replicas of a 300,000-year-old wooden spear, one of nine ancient hunting tools discovered at Germany's Schöningen coal mine, at a bale of hay for accuracy.

Many researchers have suspected that Neandertals or their ancestors snuck up on and stabbed prey with the pointed wooden rods. That idea aligns with a popular assumption that Stone Age Homo sapiens had a monopoly on hurling spears at prey. Yet bodies capable of accurate and powerful throwing may have emerged nearly 2 million years ago in Homo erectus (SN Online: 6/26/13). So why not Neandertals?

Now data from high-speed video cameras at Milks' unusual throw-off, held in January 2015 and reported online January 25 in Scientific Reports, suggest that Neandertals might have used the spears for long-range hunting.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 03 2019, @03:45PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 03 2019, @03:45PM (#795698)

    I mean, just look at how easy it is for us to get disabled for days / life from an infected cut...

    Aye, it always amuses me when people never factor things like that in, about 23 years back, a minor cut I sustained on my leg whilst out hiking in the wilds managed, by the time I got back to civilisation, to develop into an infection down to the bone despite the (admittedly basic) wound care I applied to it.
    Modern antibiotics and antiseptics stopped it going any further, apart from a funky near circular discoloured patch of skin on the leg it healed with no long term issues other than it does throb quite nicely when the weather's on the change.
    An older colleague at the time when he saw the wound remarked that people didn't realise how lucky they were nowadays, as a boy during the second world war he'd been out playing in the fields with his older brother, his older brother sustained a deep scratch on his leg and was dead in less than a week from septicaemia.

    I always keep some Povidone liquid and impregnated gauze handy nowadays, call me a paranoid old bastard..

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  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday February 03 2019, @06:04PM (3 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday February 03 2019, @06:04PM (#795745) Journal

    I also keep gauze and the trio of alcohol, 3% peroxide, and povidone around. You're not paranoid; you're *smart.* Who the hell modded you down? +1 from me not least because you could save someone's life in the coming post-antibiotics era.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday February 04 2019, @12:07AM

    by Arik (4543) on Monday February 04 2019, @12:07AM (#795890) Journal
    The question is not if you're paranoid, the question is if you're paranoid *enough.*
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?