One of the fascinating things about the Schöningen spears is what they tell us about how well the makers understood the material properties of the wood they used. The base of a tree/sapling is stronger, more dense wood and more resistant to damage as a result. These spears were made specifically to take advantage of this, with the proximal or striking point made from the base of the sapling, and the distal end the lighter, more flexible wood, which helps in flight and in avoiding shaft breakage upon impact. This indicates that they understood the material properties of the wood very well, and made these spears specifically maximize their effectiveness in light of the material properties.

@GavTatu

11 ай бұрын

and many generations no doubt, to get to that level of intricacy.

@letsdothis9063

11 ай бұрын

Yup. They weren't dumb. Children that grew up, well...like me, figure these things out. The people from this time were masters of their environment (as we are today, in a sense). I believe that the really astounding achievements have been lost to time. For me...acting impressed that they knew how to utilize the simple materials at their disposal, is an insult to their intelligence. I don't mean to cause argument. I am just stating my opinion.

@telebubba5527

11 ай бұрын

That could also mean that they were capable of making other things out of wood. It's a bit of a shame that none of that is ever found. Wood would be the easiest material to express their culture one would think.

@blairweinberg6279

11 ай бұрын

@@telebubba5527 Of course they were capable of making other things, they were as intelligent as we are they just weren't as technologically advanced. They had their Einsteins and Michelangelos too.

@mweskamppp

11 ай бұрын

@@letsdothis9063 neanderthals knew how to make birch tar. who knows when it was invented.

Dr Milks is an eloquent and knowledgeable speaker and obviously passionate about her work. It was a pleasure to listen to her explain the past.

@peterplotts1238

11 ай бұрын

Likewise, it was a pleasure to look upon Dr. Milks as she described the predawn of humanity.

@danstrayer111

11 ай бұрын

@@peterplotts1238 Indeed, she had my attention in total.

Hawaiians were using wood tipped, barbed, spears for combat up until the early 1800's. The weight of the spear with its momentum make it deadly, even with a blunt tip. We throw them during makahiki games, and a proficient person can throw many yards accurately as well as catch spears thrown at them (seriously, look it up).

@fancyincubus

11 ай бұрын

That seems like a sight to behold Thanks M8 I love this kinda stuff

@jamescoull7402

11 ай бұрын

I like your comment. Thanks for the knowledge. Then the British empire came along with canons and muskets and wiped out lots of indigenous people. I’m from Scotland. Peace

@CardinalKaos

11 ай бұрын

Kamehameha I was known for catching them out of the air when they were thrown at him in anger. Like, what a fucking boss move lol

@theofficialken1755

11 ай бұрын

@@CardinalKaos I teach Hawaiian history, and honestly, I didn't believe some of the stories...at first. Captain Vancouver wrote in his official journal that Kamehameha caught 4/6 spear thrown at him, parried one, and dodged the last. They still have Lua training here on Maui. I've seen guys do it, while moving forward. It's nuts.

@peterj.f.blackwood-davis7840

11 ай бұрын

Should be noted also that Hawaiians were also canibals up to the artival of Westerners The same as most Pacific islanders....they found the palms of victims the most delicious to eat. Stone age cultures were an anacronism up until the 1800s.....are an anomily of humankind caused by isolation.

The sort of trees need to make wooden spears is fairly common worldwide, while the kind of stone needed to make durable points is somewhat rare and also more difficult to find. This alone suggests that wooden spears would remain in use after stone working becomes available.

@HappyBeezerStudios

11 ай бұрын

Also when the spear gets stuck in the animal, you'll lose the stone (or later metal) tip. When the same tool could be use to sharpen more sticks into spears.

@stephanieyee9784

8 ай бұрын

You need to lose the whole "worldwide" idea. Here I Australia we don't Have the same types of trees that grow in the Europe, North America etc. There is a Lot more to The World than Europe, Eurasia and North America.

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein

@Joseph-fw6xx

11 ай бұрын

Yes we will revert backwards

@skateboardingjesus4006

11 ай бұрын

Well not sticks and stones exactly. After many generations have bred out the catastrophic mutagenic ailments from a slowly increasing population, some form of mechanical weapons would be developed from the limited residual technological leftovers from pre-world war 3. And we're dumb enough as a species not to have finally learned from such an incident of near self extinction, only to repeat the cycle. Our anthropocentric irrational narcissism is what will finish us off. Cynicism? Nope, just aware of the blatantly obvious. Hopeful? Yes, that we might develop the maturity to drag ourselves out of our primitive cradle.

@ianmoon1103

11 ай бұрын

You can't have a world war without international coordination. If people are using sticks and stones to fight then they're not going to be communicating internationally to coordinate warfare.

@doncarlodivargas5497

7 ай бұрын

World War IV will be fought with dislikes on TikTok commerade, do our nuclear weapons even work? Do you know?

@mooseolini1447

7 ай бұрын

If we bomb ourselves back to the stoneage in WWIII, we wouldn't be capable of waging another world war. Not until we build back to a state of great enough sophistication. What a great mind...Look into the think-tank behind old Bert.

11:38 "Why they left them behind [the spears at Schöningen]" seems pretty obvious to me. She mentioned that the area was a lake shore, which is where big game come to drink. Hunters likely ambushed game at the shoreline, and the spears that missed their prey simply torpedoed into the water and buried themselves in the silt/clay.

Makes sense that they’d still use just wood spears, even once they started making flint or rock tipped spears. The wooden spears are easier to make and would work just fine for quite a few things, could save the harder to make flint or rock tipped spear for when they’d really need it then. You wouldn’t want to damage your good spear or lose the rock tip, when you can use an easier to make wooden spear instead. 🤷‍♀️

@robertrobert7924

11 ай бұрын

Excellent "point" ( no pun intended). Also, in training children, wooden spears would make more sense because they were easier to make, resharpen, and if broken, easier to replace.

@fredwood1490

11 ай бұрын

Whatever works! The practical, was the way of life at the time.

@HappyBeezerStudios

11 ай бұрын

That's the one thing I think about. When stuck in the wilderness, don't tie your knife to a stick. If you throw it for hunting, the knife might get stuck in the prey and you only have one knife. Use the knife to make the stick itself pointy, because that way you can have as many spears as you need.

@mattjessup8376

11 ай бұрын

How did the tool suit the purpose? These spears would be good for spear fishing. In shallow calm water where fish were abundant. A flint spear tip wrapped in gut or plant string wouldn’t last very long getting wet.

@fredwood1490

11 ай бұрын

@@mattjessup8376 Yes, they were building the Box we are supposed to think outside of! A stone from the ground can be a deadly weapon, for a small animal or a distraction for a larger one, a curved stick makes a boomerang that will fly a good distance and kill something and took ten minutes to carve, with a sharp rock. Everything is a tool if you have the mind to see it and that means smarts! Those old Homos were plenty smart, smart enough to build a society out of the wilderness, even before the invention of the Cell Phone.

I've seen a video of a young man in the Balkans, wearing traditional clothing, spear a boar with a wooden spear. His dogs were worrying the boar and the boar ran straight at him. He simply braced his spear against the ground and held it pointing towards the running boar. The boar ran into the spear, impaling himself. It's like the boar did not recognize the spear as being dangerous. The boar was focused on attacking the man. The spear impaled the boar all the way through and the man picked the boar up and threw the boar down so the boar was on his back. The boar was still alive and squealing loudly. The young man drew a large knife from his belt and stabbed the boar in the neck and the boar soon died. It was an impressive sight. The man seemed to be very experienced with spear hunting boar.

@jackbehling5694

10 ай бұрын

Same technique used by South American natives to hunt El tigre

@cillyhoney1892

10 ай бұрын

@@jackbehling5694 Sweetie there are no tigers to hunt in South America. Maybe you are thinking of the jaguar? Nobody is hunting them either. Too elusive,

@AdlerMow

5 ай бұрын

"Tigre" is how very old south americans called the jaguar, both in spanish and portuguese. Nowadays they are called "onça" on Brazil.

@LBC_Lenny

Ай бұрын

​@@cillyhoney1892"Sweetie" stfu if you don't now what you're talking aboutn

Never seen this channel in my feed before. Not even three minutes in and I’m subscribed. Immediately into knowledgeable and qualified person giving a very thorough explanations and descriptions. Love it

@HistoryHit

11 ай бұрын

Welcome aboard!

@IratePuffin

11 ай бұрын

You’re in for a treat!

@TrevorGrace-mv5lz

2 ай бұрын

up to a point

Can we please have a video on all the testing they did? That looks fascinating

In case anyone hadn't realised it, Clacton-on-Sea would not have been 'on-sea' 400,000 years ago, but in the middle of a continuous land mass from what is now the British Isles across to the Central European Plain. Doggerland no longer exists as the North Sea drowned it relatively recently.

@bobkoroua

11 ай бұрын

And all in an afternoon.

I was born in Essex and I've been to Clacton. Not entirely suprised one of the earliest weapons was found there to be honest.

The best presenter ever. Every syllable clearly understandable. She should be a news reader.

@capslockbusted

3 ай бұрын

She's well over qualified for that.

Really good! I for one would be interested in a film on the experimental use of these tools. Nice one team! 🌟👍

@Moamanly

11 ай бұрын

I'd be more interested to see them test actual replicas because the samples we saw were too straight! Maybe 'too straight' is not accurate, what i mean is, the originals weren't as straight as the ones on the desk.

@carolyncopeland2722

11 ай бұрын

@@Moamanly But the spears may have originally been straight and became warped after thousands of years in the ground, with changes in ground movement, pressure and water over time. With the high resolution CT scans she mentioned I am sure they could tell due to the wood grain if these were originally straight or not

@Moamanly

11 ай бұрын

@@carolyncopeland2722 Yeah that's an excellent point you make, it would certainly make sense, for an effective missile that was used over such a long period, to be straight.

It occurs to me that if you throw a spear like this at an elephant (from a short distance, these are heavy) it won't go in very far, but if the elephant charges you with one end of the spear penetrating just enough to stay put, and the other (also sharp) end of the spear on the ground, the elephant will do the work for you and impale itself. This might mean that hunting large, aggressive animals is actually easier than hunting smaller, less aggressive animals.

@telebubba5527

11 ай бұрын

They would also have set traps for them to fall in.

@douginorlando6260

11 ай бұрын

They probably used teamwork to scare the beast towards guys hiding and ready to do exactly that. A panicked animal with lots of momentum could really get impaled. Also when surrounding a wounded beast I picture them charging/surrounding from 2 or 3 directions then as they simultaneously poke the beast, they jam the back end down into the ground. Each spear penetrating the hide upward with a 45 degree angle and the back end of the spear locked into the ground, the beast could not push against the spear. With 3 spears evenly spaced around the beast, it can not move without impaling itself. After it’s trapped like this, the hunters would make the kill.

@magnipettersson4432

11 ай бұрын

@@douginorlando6260 yes. if you can come up with that then so did they

@homebrandrules

11 ай бұрын

you must be french ! surrender monkey much!?? et tu c"est la sange c"est vraiment veritais !! we,ll see what happens

@homebrandrules

11 ай бұрын

et tu c"est la sange c"est vraiment veritais !!

The most successful hunting tool is not so much the spear itself, it’s group tactics. The plan was not just to sneak up on the beast and then throw spears, it was to position hunters where the beast was likely to run when surprised by the women & children who scare the beast in the intended direction (into the waiting spear chucking range and spear jabbing range.

@alexbowman7582

11 ай бұрын

If you can get one deep spear wound into the belly or leg of a mammoth the animal will die, it’ll take a few days though but presumably it’s pack will have to leave it behind and eventually it will die.

@juergenernst1320

11 ай бұрын

You might be confusing hunting strategy and hunting tool. The strategy you describe and which undoubtedly led to a higher kill rate would be worthless without a tool unless you plan on choking the beasts you speak of.

@fintonmainz7845

11 ай бұрын

Really? You have proof of Hunter gatherers using this technique in modern times?

@mountaingoattaichi

11 ай бұрын

@@fintonmainz7845chimps use this strat.

@westzed23

11 ай бұрын

In hunting wild boar, didn't they have beaters to scare the animals down paths and have person with a spear planted so that when the boar attacked it could run onto the spear. More in medieval times and probably with tipped spears.

The phenomenon that different levels of technology exist next to each other (like the fully wooden spears and the stone-tipped spears they talk about around minute 20) is also known from other time periods. For example, the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle has a bronze arrow tip and a stone arrow tip, both from the Bronze Age. The tips are of the same size and shape (very finely made, about the size of a larger fingernail). I assume it has to do with availability of material. If you had access to the better stuff, you could use that, but if you maybe didn't have any of that at the time, you would fall back onto the earlier technology and make do with that. Or maybe if you can do with the easier/cheaper method, you will not undertake the effort of using the more costly version. A wooden spear is made more quickly than a stone-tipped spear, so it's "cheaper" in time. And bronze was expensive, so a stone arrow tip was cheaper than a bronze one.

@fredwood1490

11 ай бұрын

Stone spear and arrow tips tend to be single use, they break off, often inside the body of the target, helping it to die faster, but meaning you have to make a new tip, or repair an old one, each time. Not to with a bronze tip. As for the stack of wooden "Spear/digging stick" shafts, they could simply be waiting for their tips.

That was so interesting I’m amazed those spears were 400 thousand years old

@rich8085

11 ай бұрын

Are you thinking the replicas are the 400 thousand year old spears?

@murkyseb

11 ай бұрын

@@rich8085 they clearly are, even though they're called replicas they're replicas that were made 400 thousand years ago

@yedidyah-jedshlomoh1533

11 ай бұрын

@@murkyseb no

@murkyseb

11 ай бұрын

@@yedidyah-jedshlomoh1533 nah they are

@patverum9051

10 ай бұрын

@@murkyseb Look up replica.

Really enjoyed this video, so thoughtful and exciting at the same time. Thank you to all concerned, especially Dr. Milks.

We play with their skulls. But these were living creatures who loved, who hated, who mated, raised children, had lives of happiness and sorrow, danger and peace. I think it's important to remember that.

Just saw a throwing demonstration with replicas of the Schöningen Spears, the modern athletes noted how alike they are to the Olympic Javelins.

They obviously must travel in groups and the lake was a seasonal habitat. The spears may have been left behind at the site because they had made more than they used and decided to leave them for when they return next season. I’m sure the clan members would feel good about knowing the lake site is set up for their return, waiting for them. Probably also some kind of shelter waiting for their return too.

@teatowel11

11 ай бұрын

A less happy thought is that they made enough spears for the clan but not all of them survived the hunts. The spears of the fallen were perhaps left in honour of them or they were limited in ehat thdy could carry.

@douginorlando6260

11 ай бұрын

@@teatowel11 yes, a possible explanation that makes sense … but I like a happy story better😁

Very in depth, thank you! These quality videos simply cannot be replicated by A.l. Bravo

I have three different examples of hardwood tipped long arrows (1.5m) from Papua New Guinea they look and are scary effective in both hunting and warfare.

@johannageisel5390

11 ай бұрын

I mean, skin only is that hard. Once you get over that hardness, there is no increase in effectiveness anymore. The only thing that makes the projectile deadlier at that point is to hurl (shoot) it with more speed or to make it heavier and shoot it at the same speed. Therefor, hardwood arrow = fine.

@johnwalker1471

11 ай бұрын

@@johannageisel5390A pointed stick is not very effective at killing an animal unless they’re poisoned. A broad head type tip cuts blood vessels whereas a pointed tip will usually push them aside.

Tristan, I think this is a wonderful video! I listened to your audio podcast first and thought it would have been nice to see what you were looking at! This video came as a suggestion today. Glad to see it!❤️👍

@HistoryHit

11 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it!

I just listened to this as a podcast yesterday. The editing differences are interesting and make total sense. Just an observation. It’s interesting what different choices are made based on the media form.

A pointy stick is also good for uses other than poking animals and people. You can use it to dig or carry or drag or stack them together and make a temporary shelter. They don't have to be thrown or thrust; you can plant one end like pikemen receiving a cavalry charge or how Japanese hunters would defend against a bear. It's a useful all round outdoors tool, just as an axe or a knife is.

@teatowel11

11 ай бұрын

Also great for reaching things, in a tree or stream or supporting ones weight eg when crossing a stream.

Absolutely fascinating!

the spear was the king of historical weapons for sure

@johannageisel5390

11 ай бұрын

"Behold! I have invented the LARGE POINTY STICK!!!" - some person in the past

Great talk Dr. Milks!

Thank you for this video.

Very good question and answer.

Which occurred first, the spear or the hiking staff? Did early man started to use a stick to help him or her walk and then found could be used as a spear?

It is great to see that that more passionate research is done around this topic, which was first picked up by german researchers around 2000.

I had no idea as to the size of the spears! They are huge and I suspect the mussels required to throw them effectively was SIGNIFICANT! Incredible video! It’s a good day when I learn something new and today was a very good day!

@DanBeech-ht7sw

10 ай бұрын

Beware the murderous giant bivalve with a spear and attitude

@DanBeech-ht7sw

10 ай бұрын

@@kellyharbeson18 they look exactly like javelins

@DanBeech-ht7sw

10 ай бұрын

@@kellyharbeson18 I have indeed thrown the javelin competitively. The frontal centre of gravity gives these away as javelins. As for them being poor weapons, well, for some reason the Egyptians used them extensively and they were a military superpower. And this poor weapon was used decisively in the battle of Lechaeum

@larrybesel9423

10 ай бұрын

@@kellyharbeson18 Thank you for the clarification! As for spears, I’m not sure if darts are a accurate description for a spear…

@DanBeech-ht7sw

10 ай бұрын

@@kellyharbeson18 they were used in warfare, by people who knew what they were doing, and who were quite literally staking their lives on how good they were. And they practiced a lot. And if YOU have thrown javelin competitively, you know that you are going for distance and nothing else, which is not the same as throwing javelins at a bunch of people with the aim of killing them. Furthermore, the English longbow certainly IS a precision weapon at shorter range, while being an excellent saturation weapon too. Cave paintings show that people used throwing javelins extensively for hunting.

Why is there a debate about whether it was thrown or thrusted? What would your action be if you had that tool now? You'd either throw or thrust it, based on the situation, right? Tried to reproduce it for testing? Were all of you born adults, with no chance to experience childhood?

Absolutely excellent

I lived 19 years in Schöningen, we have a big museum build around that find called the Palaeon, never knew that those spears are so fucking famous and it makes me somehow proud

I've learnt to nap rocks 60 years ago in my 20 s I live in the mountains for a little over 2 years . My walking stick I used every day one end was sharp an fire hardened. In the end I used it for small game ...birds spearing fish ECT. Also my finer spear points were made in the winter while hold up in a cave for the winter

Pointed at both ends so when one end is broken off say in a target after a thrust the other end is usable as well.

wonderful speaker and excellent talk. I have also heard the Kent state archeologist speak on tool usage in person! also very interesting!!!

@19:08. I find cherokee artifacts all the time & they used the same technology of preparing a flake/tool before knocking it off the "mother" stone. Super cool to see it goes back 400k years.

I would reckon purely wooden spears persisted after stone-tipped spears were developed because stone-tipped spears are only marginally more effective then purely wooden spears, way more time/effort consuming to make, and more prone to snapping after a single use. In short, stone-tipped spears offer marginal improvement for far more resources consumed. It was still very useful to have purely wooden spears as backup.

@27:31-27:41: Mentions Congo, which is in Central Africa, but shows an image of Maasai warriors near the Ngorongoro Crater, which is in Tanzania, East Africa.

@speakupriseup4549

11 ай бұрын

There were no borders back in the day so everyone was just from Africa (must have been a nightmare being a paleolithic postman)

dr. annemeike is wonderful i hope you have her again!!

These spears are amazingly multi-purpose in their simplicity. Use the narrower end as a lance, and the thicker end as a weighted spear. You could even discipline teenagers or unruly livestock with a quick whack.

I love this channel I'm shocked there's less than a million subscribers 😮! It's like the History channel except history hit actually plays History. Amazing right!

Great video

I wonder what should one study to get cool obs like these. Awesome discussion.

If you have the opportunity , visit this museum! It's really worth a visit .

enjoyable program with a knowledgeable and pretty lady, great information

My thoughts on why wooden spears and javelins were kept in use long after stone tipped spears were introduced. Wooden spears are faster, cheaper and easier to make and use as more disposable spears than the more expensive stone tipped ones.

Thank you.

My guess would be retrievability... if you might lose your spear e.g. cause you still were chasing an animal or it might go over a hillside the wooden tip might the better choice as it's easier to replace, the stone tip would be preserved for "sure shots" or giving the killing blow. A wooden shaft would be far less effort to replace when broken than a good tip you could not get back...

Thanks!

Adding a stone tip to spears certainly makes sense. But the peculiar thing is that it is enough to attach a tiny tip to achieve the same effect as with a large, elaborately manufactured spearhead. That experienced hunters who should not have known that a tiny tip (size of a fingernail) is quite sufficient to enable penetration of even very thick skin of a prey seems quite strange in this context.

Stone point spears make a larger wound track allowing a animal to bleed out faster thru the track than what a sharpened wooden spear would do. The wooden spear would compress around the wound track and not allow blood to flow as freely.

Very intresting

Good Video, lady got excited at the thought of a hunting site LOL

That was fun. I like this kind of stuff

Wooden spears are going to have a use even to people who know how to work stone. If you're a hunter-gatherer you have to use the materials to hand. Good stone isn't available everywhere. Different environments have different geology and in many places the bedrock is a long way down, or the predominant forms of rock are too soft to make useful tools, or too tough to be worked easily. Nomadic people may have picked up supplies of stones when they passed through an area that had them, and they may have traded with other groups that had stone to spare. But it would always be sensible to be able to make weapons and tools from a variety of materials so you can still hunt if you don't have any good rocks nearby.

With the double taper weighted toward on end, the spears could certainly be thrown

My goodness. She's awesome. That silky shirt on her is amazing.

That's a fighting spear. The purpose of sharpening both ends is so you can stab with both ends. So, example parry with back end then stab up into throat or eyes. It reminds me of Massai spears which often has a butt spike as well as the spear blade.

I live next to Schöningen but really have never been to the museum

The rocks, especially the gray, are fine knapping material.

Those are some seriously hefty spears! Could see them taking down big prey, or big predators.

Would a wooden spear leave identifiable marks on bones? They could kill an animal by penetrating a blood vessel, or vital organs (heart, lung), causing bleeding, shock, or loss of function without cutting any bones encountered. Any impact damage (say skull fracture or even rib breaks) would probably be indistinguishable from blunt instruments like clubs.

@Yvolve

11 ай бұрын

Highly unlikely as wood is softer than bone. The tip would deform before the bone would. It is to cause flesh wound and get it to bleed out. As you said, the skull and rib cage would be the only bones to get damaged, maybe the shoulder blade. It would look like any other blunt force trauma though, if it was the skull. A rib cage might show it as a round hole, but that would've been eaten and the bones discarded, or eaten by dogs.

@JerehmiaBoaz

11 ай бұрын

@@Yvolve Sounds plausible but is untrue, sure the tip would deform but given enough force a wooden spear tip would definitely break bone. By the way, you know what's also softer than bone? Lead

@Yvolve

11 ай бұрын

@@JerehmiaBoaz Given the shape of most bones, it would not break it, but have it be a glancing blow. You'd have to hit it exactly right, or it won't break a bone. You know what travels at 100's of meters per second and therefore have the immense potential kinetic energy in a tiny object? A bullet. You know what disintegrates on impact? A bullet. You know what stays intact on impact? A wooden spear because you can't throw it with enough force for it to explode. The fact you compare these, shows you have very little understanding of what is going on.

@JerehmiaBoaz

11 ай бұрын

@@Yvolve Sorry but that just isn't true, physically speaking it depends on the pressure generated (dependent on speed and mass of the spear and surface area of its tip) and the tensile strength and elasticity of both the spear tip and the bone. The fact that you think that a "hard" material can't be destroyed by a "soft" material proves you're operating on intuition. (Kinetic energy is 0.5m * v^2 so an 8 gram bullet traveling at 300 m/s has exactly the same kinetic energy as a 1.8 kg spear traveling at 20 m/s.)

@Yvolve

11 ай бұрын

​@@JerehmiaBoaz No, bones aren't flat, so unless you hit it so the point is perfectly perpendicular to the surface it is impacting, it will glance. The chances of hitting a bone perfectly like that is near impossible. If you read my first comment in its entirety. you would've seen I said that the skull, rib cage and shoulder blade would get destroyed because of the shape. All bone. The fact you assume that I think what you assume, shows you can't think outside of your own very limited experience, knowledge and reasoning, as you need me to think a certain way for your "argument" to hold up. I'm specifically talking about thrown wooden spears and bone, nothing else, yet you imply I think this goes for every combination which is similar. You might think this way, hence the idiotic comparison to bullets, but I don't. A wooden arrow, despite being light and quite fragile, will easily go through skin and can definitely break bones, because of the potential kinetic energy the bow imparted on the arrow. It is also moving so fast, the point doesn't have time to move out of the way, unlike a thrown spear.

Just looking at the design of the spear suggests to me that it was "set against a charge". Drive the herd towards a narrowed passage and the hominids lept into the passage at the last minute and jabbed one end into the ground and let the animal's momentum impale it on the set spear.

@fredwood1490

11 ай бұрын

I hadn't thought about that! The same thing was used around camps and forts up to the 19th century.

Indigenous Australian are still using wooden spears, with fire hardened tips on traditional hunts. Selecting and shaping a sapling has significant meaning. Not surprisingly from one of the world’s longest continuous culture, and worth looking at for greater insight.

@Lex-Hawthorn

11 ай бұрын

We are the ORIGINAL people mate. When OZ was attached to Antarctica, along with sth america, and other continents.

@teatowel11

11 ай бұрын

​@ConontheBinarianplease explain why an offset point is good

@teatowel11

11 ай бұрын

Really cool composite spears are made by some tribes. The shaft is more like a light cane, and then there is a hardwood tip that both weights that end and is more robust and keeps a sharper edge. There are thrown with a woomera (although that name is used by different tribes in central Australia) otherwise known as an atlatle or spear chucker.

I think they were making wooden spears because they could be produced quickly. It seems like they wouldnt be carrying around lots of weopons because they needed to be highly mobile and cover vast distances.

Fascinating. I have often thought about what I'd do if I suddenly awoke naked and alone in some prehistoric era. I task myself with getting a long, strong stick to jab with and a few throwing sized rocks. Then shelter and food.

@StephenHutchison

11 ай бұрын

Shelter, water, hunting weapons, food. In that order.

@DanBeech-ht7sw

10 ай бұрын

That's a classic anxiety dream

Tristen always covers the coolest content.

I have heard that the American Natives used wet rawhide strips to hold the stone points onto wood shafts. When the rawhide dries it holds quite tightly.

@teatowel11

11 ай бұрын

Sinew (long tendons) is commonly used, usually from the back strap of deer.

are they sharp on both tips in case one tip breaks off? maybe wooden tools predate stone tools?

There they are! I was wondering what happened to my spears.

Many are still unsure whether Clactonians form part of any human group, even today.

The tips of spear looks quite smooth / uniform, I wonder what type of tool was used to fashion spear shape in this harder wood?

@speakupriseup4549

11 ай бұрын

Belt sander 😂

@TorchwoodPandP

11 ай бұрын

Flint, or sand, or fire! Or a combination

@wandapease-gi8yo

11 ай бұрын

Did you notice the sharpened stone hand axe near the beginning? Any broken pebble from a stream usually has at least the broken edge sharp enough to scrape a point.

@johnfisk811

11 ай бұрын

Gritty rock and sand. Done it.

Is there any way to tell if the points were fire hardened?😊

Precious specimens like these should not be touched with bare hands.

@kevinskiles2033

11 ай бұрын

These are copies.

Sometimes you need a $3000 Tikka in 7mm 08, and sometimes you only need a Cooey single shot 22lr. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, sometimes the hunt requires something powerful and high end, sometimes the simple and old is enough and it’s cheaper. A stone tipped spear is much harder to make and a missed shot can easily break it.

I don't remember hearing if the points of the spears were fire hardened. This would make them stronger and not as likely to break upon impact.

If you are bipedal with hands you are going to carry a spear, because if you don't you will become a predator's meal. This almost certainly goes back a long time. Consider Lucy: a little over three feet tall and walking around in an environment with lions, hyenas, and leopards, among others. Human bipedality makes you slow, too slow to run away from predators. However, bipedality means you can carry a sharpened stick, making it dangerous for predators to attack you, especially if you travel in groups. Predators don't take risks it they don't have to. A group of 3-5 foot tall apes might look tasty to a lion, but those sticks... I imagine if you went back two million years to East Africa, you would never see Hominins wandering around without spears.

IMO, Rocks, and Gravity were the earliest/ oldest weapons. The fire was right up there...

@Lex-Hawthorn

11 ай бұрын

You cant say that mate, the yanks would deny that, it was a bloke in america under an apple tree. before that there was no gravity..

Here's a question on the practicality of wooden spears. Neanderthals are often potrayed as a more robust, stronger species than Homo sapiens. Depending on how much more, how would a Neanderthal female compare to a modern fit human male? I'm thinking about all those skeletal markers for increased muscle strength. The reason I'm asking is when thrust a wooden spear will easily penetrate the abdominal wall of many possible prey species. I was going to comment that doing this with a horse would be easier than with a rhinoceros - that butchered straight tusk elephant shows why we need skilled paleontologist like this lady. Awesome video!

Bone tips are a sharpenable hard material that could be used on spears. Many examples are recorded in history. Also, succesful hunters would have lots of bones.

I think I'll go to Schöningen - need a road trip

Question: the deeper something is buried the older it is but at the same time, supposedly things erode by weather etc so the more weathered something is, the older it is. How can both be true?

always a sampling issue which improve over time as more sites investigated.

I wonder if these earlier 'spears' are fish racks, put into the ground with the larger point, and skewering caught fish to dry on the sharper end. The dual end points could also indicate it is a passive (stuck in the ground) defensive stick against large animals trampling their huts. It was a completely different kind of world to ours, with huge herds of mega fauna. It is also fascinating to see that the African tribes use the same wooden spear design still to this day, and theirs are tipped on the wooden tip with a metal sword like thing. Any such metal capping system would have been dislodged and withered away after a couple of hundreds of years.

@kenfalloon3186

11 ай бұрын

Metalurgy, 400,000 yrs ago? Don't think so.

i've been raised on "neanderthals couldn't conceptualize projectile weapons". and ofc, as a good student, i repeated it, despite always feeling a little icked by it. i was really glad when the spears where dated and thus assigned to neanderthals

20:50 They are using both at the same time but for a different part of the hunt, throwing a wooden spear and missing will not mean having to make a new spear point while the javelin style spear is good enough for that job with any damage from a miss can be just whittled out. Thrusting with a stone point will be better with a wider and sharper edge. Throw javelin and use the stone spear to finish the animal. Cost in time, materials, and effort to replace a broken point compared to sharpening a stick is economical. Then it would be 1 person throwing and another thrusting, there would need to be teamwork for hunting to be successful, someone to flush the animals towards the trap, throwers hitting them as the run by and thrusters further up to finish them.

You can make easy modification to those wood spears and add a stone tip.

I wonder how many times someone has found a, "pointy stuck," and had no idea that they were holding a spear from half-a-million years ago? If you don't know what you're looking at it's just a pointy stick, isn't it? Not so many people have the training to recognize one, do they?

As much as anything else, we not only had our long-distance legs, but we also had our arms/shoulders/upright posture. We could throw objects very fast and very far, in comparison to any other hominid type of animal. Take a baseball pitcher and instead of a baseball, give him a quarter-pound river-rock. Thrown accurately enough and he could decisively take out an apex predator such as large k-9s and cats. I also suggest that slings were used thousands of years earlier than spears. It was only when humans started to develop WAR that such things as spears and their technological improvements were composed.

There are still Neanderthal in Clacton. Seen that spear head years ago didn’t realise it was important.

It took half way through the interview to confirm my suspicions that we were looking at reproductions, and to finally discuss how they were made and used. The question remains where are the original spears and what do they look like. The reproductions look very straight and perfectly shaped and rather heavy.

@soulless435

11 ай бұрын

It is said at 3:17 that these are replicas..

@peterbreis5407

11 ай бұрын

@@soulless435 Yes, barely mentioned, but it should have been said up front and I can only assume the brief glimpse of something or other may have been the originals. They should have been revealed in detail.

@philgiglio7922

10 ай бұрын

There were several photographs of the originals, admittedly only the terminal end, but there was a scale bar included

Another possible reason for both ends being sharpened on these spears, which you don't see on any modern hunter gathering groups, is that they are not spears. They could be fishing implements or part of traps like a pit trap. With a pit trap both ends need to be sharpened, one goes in the ground and the other in the animal. Regardless, those are made of softwood species and are not very strong. They also look very heavy and would not make very good throwing spears. Having a second sharp end pointing back at you would also be a terrible idea when thrusting into an animal that weighs up to a ton. I am having trouble seeing these as spears at all.

@DanBeech-ht7sw

10 ай бұрын

Yeah. Except these were real

@jamesstepp1925

10 ай бұрын

I am not sure what you mean "these are real". Of course they are real, probably from the estimated time and made by humans at the time. My point is that the deduction of how they were used may be faulty. Show me one hunter gatherer group, modern or ancient, who made verified spears using this form. Throwing or pushing. There are not any I am aware of. Unlike these scientists I have hunted with spears, and while these share the same vague form there are too many inconsistencies in their form and materials to make them effective for hunting. Trapping though...

@DanBeech-ht7sw

10 ай бұрын

@@jamesstepp1925 they look precisely the same shape as an Olympic javelin which is a throwing spear. So now we have something that looks like a duck and quacks like a duck. Down to you to provide an alternative and plausible hypothesis of what they are instead of what they are not

It seems that the double sharpened ends would be useful for grounding one point into the earth as a pikeman would do

Perhaps stone point making was very specialized. Stone points were not always available. Anybody could make a sharp stick. Check to see if sharp sticks were left longer in hopes of trimming and installing a stone point when one was available.