Re: NOVA show *Neanderthals on Trial*; Stonethrowing theory applied

From: Archimedes Plutonium (a_plutonium_at_iw.net)
Date: 10/30/04 

Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 02:50:39 -0500

Fri, 29 Oct 2004 13:53:46 GMT Larry Caldwell wrote:

> In article <417610F4.901579D6@iw.net>, a_plutonium@iw.net (Archimedes
> Plutonium) says...
> > It is reflected in the tools found in Neanderthal sites that they are not tools of
> > a great thrower.
>
> This old theory took a heavy hit when the Heidelberg Man javelins were
> discovered.
>
> http://www.archaeology.org/9705/newsbriefs/spears.html
>

Thanks, I have taken the liberty to quote the article in entirety since it is on the
web anyway and very short:

--- quoting ---
    World's Oldest Spears
                                                         Volume 50 Number 3, May/June
1997
    by Arlette P. Kouwenhoven

    Radiocarbon dating has confirmed that three wooden spears found in a coal mine in
    Schöningen, near Hannover, Germany, are the oldest complete hunting weapons ever
found.
    Some 380,000 to 400,000 years old, the six- to 7.5-foot javelins were found in soil
whose acids
    had been neutralized by a high concentration of chalk near the coal pit. They
suggest that early
    man was able to hunt, and was not just a scavenger. The development of such weapons
may
    have been crucial to the settling of Stone Age northern Europe, whose cold climate
and short
    daylight hours limited hunting.

    The spears show design and construction skills previously attributed only to modern
humans.
    "They are really high tech," says Hartmut Thieme of the Institut f&uumlr
Denkmalpflege in
    Hannover, who discovered them while excavating in advance of a rotary shovel digger
used in
    the mine. "They are made of very tough Picea [spruce] trunk and are similarly
carved." Their
    frontal center of gravity suggests they were used as javelins, says Thieme.

    The only comparable find dating to the same period is a yew lance tip from
Clacton-on-Sea,
    England, discovered in 1911. Thieme says the Schöningen discovery is important
because it
    proves that the Clacton lance tip was not just a chance find and that spears were
probably being
    made in large quantities. The Clacton lance tip suggested that people may have been
hunting;
    the three spears from Schöningen now make it fairly certain that they were not
merely
    scavenger-gatherers. That early man hunted big game is supported by the recent
discovery of a
    fossilized rhinoceros shoulder blade with a projectile wound at Boxgrove, England,
dated to
    500,000 years ago. Studies revealed the wound was probably caused by a spear. As
    paleoanthropologist Wil Roebroeks of the University of Leiden points out, however,
"we still
    haven't determined whether early man hunted in large groups, or whether they used
pits to trap
    the animals first."

    Thousands of pieces of horse, elephant, and deer bone were also found at
Schöningen. The
    bones showed cut marks from stone flints found with grooved wooden tools that
probably held
    the flints. If Thieme can prove the flints were hafted in the wooden tools, they
will be the oldest
    known composite tools in the world.
--- end quoting ---

I do not know if this Schoningen Man was Neanderthal. Let us assume he was a
Neanderthal and not a CroMagnon.

The trouble I have is the high possibility of an erroneous interpretation. How in the
world can someone claim a spear is a javelin that is used for long distance throwing?
How can anyone say it was long distance when it could have been 100% used only in short
distance close in fighting and never any far distance throwing.

The article does mention center of gravity, but to me that is really grasping at straws
to say that center of gravity is evidence that the spear was a instrument of long
distance throwing.

I would simply rejoinder that this find is further proof that Neanderthal was never a
far distance thrower and produced tools that were all close-in-fighting tools. This to
me is not a javelin but a spear for close-in-fighting.

Now tell me something Larry. How many close-in-fighting tools are found at CroMagnon
sites? Seems to me that few close in fighting tools are found at sites containing
CroMagnon but many are found at sites of Neanderthal. This suggests to me that
CroMagnon spent more time on gathering rocks and stones that were used to throw a long
distance and little time on close in fighting tools of spears or knives. Neanderthal
could not throw with any accuracy or ease in long distance and so Neanderthal never
made any or few long distance tools or gathered them. But CroMagnon spent the majority
of his time in gathering of his favorite long distance throwing tools.

Now I wonder if skins that were used as carry bags for their rocks have been found for
CroMagnon. If you make your living by throwing long distance seems as though you would
want to transport alot of rocks with you at all times and this means a bag or sack to
carry the rocks around.

So has any rock bag been found for CroMagnon but not for Neanderthal?

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

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