[HN Gopher] Early human ancestors turned stones into spheres on ...
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Early human ancestors turned stones into spheres on purpose, study
suggests
Author : c420
Score : 14 points
Date : 2023-09-06 17:34 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| bhewes wrote:
| Of course its to throw them at animals and/or each other. Only
| academics would say "attempted to achieve the Platonic ideal of a
| sphere.", ha.
| justrealist wrote:
| > The team of scientists examined 150 limestone spheroids dating
| from 1.4m years ago that were found at the 'Ubeidiya
| archaeological site in the north of modern-day Israel.
|
| I mean David/Goliath wasn't totally made up for fun, slings were
| a key weapon in early warfare. They work.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I believe the term we are looking for here is balls.
| fanatic2pope wrote:
| Why not just because they could? When I got my lathe one of the
| first things I did was turn wooden spheres. It's a lot of fun
| figuring out how to make them as perfectly round as you can.
| madrox wrote:
| https://archive.ph/HSgei
|
| This doesn't seem as mysterious to me as the article suggests. We
| were still primarily roaming hunters 1.4m years ago. It's not
| difficult to imagine the uses a more aerodynamic rock would
| have...namely, you could be more accurate throwing it.
|
| But I'm sure this occurred to researchers, so maybe they're
| expressing this as "there is no evidence of how they were used"
| and not "we don't have some good ideas."
| beambot wrote:
| I'm not sure you need a utilitarian justification at all. For
| example: My 4 year old daughter makes playdoh & modeling clay
| into spheres for fun. She also makes cubes and snakes.
| madrox wrote:
| Point taken, though from my understanding hunter gatherer
| groups didn't have a ton of time for leisure...especially
| anything involving carrying a heavy object with them as they
| roamed that didn't have utility.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| But then they should be found all over - thrown weapons were
| lost all the time.
|
| Witness arrowheads - every plowed field in the American midwest
| has arrowheads. Because they were used for thousands of years,
| and lost for thousands of years.
| madrox wrote:
| A very interesting point
| c420 wrote:
| There's a huge difference in population density between the
| two groups; there was no place in the US that wasn't
| inhabited even before projectile points were fully diffused
| across the area.
|
| Combine that with the fact that we're temporally very close
| to the Indigenous occupation. Whereas there's over a million+
| years of geological processes to affect those artifacts
| original provenance.
|
| Also, if we haven't been looking for crudely rounded stones
| we aren't going to have much of a sample size to say whether
| or not they are, to use archeologist's favorite word,
| ubiquitous.
|
| I'd wager most people aren't aware that spheres aren't common
| in nature.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| Perhaps if you see such a piece of rock outside a place where
| it is likely it is an artefact (eg. a camp or burial site
| among other belongings) you wouldn't even consider it as man
| made.
|
| Maybe you have passed such things multiple times without ever
| recognizing their true origins!
| bluGill wrote:
| Spheres are an unlikely shape in nature according to the
| article.
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