[HN Gopher] To kill mammoths in the Ice Age, people used planted...
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To kill mammoths in the Ice Age, people used planted pikes, not
throwing spears
Author : pseudolus
Score : 63 points
Date : 2024-08-22 09:52 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Instead, researchers say humans may have braced the butt of
| their pointed spears against the ground and angled the weapon
| upward in a way that would impale a charging animal. The force
| would have driven the spear deeper into the predator's body,
| unleashing a more damaging blow than even the strongest
| prehistoric hunters would have been capable of on their own.
|
| I used to think humans were badass for hunting mammoths with
| throwing spears. But this is just a whole next level. Apparently
| hunting mammoths involved:
|
| 1. Getting a mammoth to charge you full speed
|
| 2. Standing your ground
|
| 3. At the right moment planting your spear in the ground
|
| 4. Holding the spear at the right angle as tons of angry mammoth
| crashes into it
|
| 5. Moving out of the way so you don't get crushed by the dying
| mammoth.
|
| Completely badass!
| gus_massa wrote:
| It's weird that they call the mammoths " _predator_ " when they
| were herbivores and we were hunting them.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I think the context for that section has shifted to "a
| charging animal" of unspecified diet, but I agree that
| "predator" is still a mismatch.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| the technique is known as the Anthony Hopkins edge and its a
| surefire way to take out large ill-tempered beasts
| poikroequ wrote:
| You beat me to it :(
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I don't know how true it is but when I was a kid, I remember
| seeing an illustration in a book that showed this technique to
| demonstrate how Maasai boys killed lions.
|
| Kill the lion and you go home as a man; don't kill the lion and
| you're a meal.
| duderific wrote:
| Then: 9-year-old kills lion, becomes a man
|
| Now: 9-year-old not allowed to walk to friend's house without
| an adult
| hooverd wrote:
| Due to a lack of lions, 9-year-olds today should kill a car
| instead, I guess.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Due to a lack of lions, 9-year-olds today should kill a
| car instead, I guess.
|
| You mean children should, for example, throw a big brick
| from a bridge over a highway - and then run away?!
|
| This is not the kind of thing that _I_ believe 9-year-
| olds should learn. :-(
| hooverd wrote:
| I forgot the sarcasm marker.
|
| Regardless, cars certainly predate on more 9-year-olds
| than lions do in this day and age.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Well yeah, the training between the two 9 year olds is
| entirely different. One was taught to fend off lions the
| other was given an ipad and youtube.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| The same is probably true for most kids the last 100 (or
| more) years. When I was 9 I was busy training to hit
| balls with a stick.
| rolph wrote:
| bo staff, or baseball bat?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Baseball bat. I didn't know people used a bo staff to hit
| balls.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Well...
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| That still makes you far more of a warrior than Jimmy
| Roblox.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Both paths teach that man is the dangerous one.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| The Maasai still exist, dude, and killing a lion is still a
| normal rite of passage.
| andoando wrote:
| In our village the 8-10 year old boys would be responsible
| for herding the cows back home from the mountains at night
| as well as riding a horse to the town over to trade milk
| and cheese.
| keybored wrote:
| Children aren't taunted into killing apex predators any
| more. What a fucking comment on society am I right.
| markatto wrote:
| This is similar to how wild boar was hunted in Europe - there
| were special spears made with extra crossbars to reduce the
| chance of a boar reaching the spear holder after being impaled.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Later, they learned to, after inciting the boar, run towards
| the center of town, then overcome it with arrows just as it
| arrived.
| faanghacker wrote:
| 11
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| to those unaware: 11 is the laughing taunt in aoe2 and is
| used in the community like lol. the poster above was
| describing how you hunt a boar in aoe2 which is a vital
| source of food in early game. it is risky to use your
| towncenter to weaken a boar because if you kill it with
| the towncenter you can not harvest the food
| Terr_ wrote:
| Thanks, I think that's a style/level of in-joke that
| needed an explanation for the wider audience.
| Particularly since the first arrow-part sounds almost
| plausible. (And "11" on its own is unlikely to give many
| useful hits.)
| andoando wrote:
| wololo
| Bluestein wrote:
| (And this - of course is what AoE shaman/priest/religious
| units would chant to "convert" enemy units to their side
| ... :)
| morbicer wrote:
| I don't know how much this is based on science but our history
| (and popular) books about ice age always depicted a hunting
| method that involves a dug out pit with spikes. Then the
| hunters would chase the animal and steer it towards the pit,
| where the mammoth gets trapped and they could finish him off.
|
| Maked sense to me as a kid because directly attacking a thick
| wooled mammoth with stone tips on sticks wouldn't be feasible.
|
| I guess the theory from the article could work too, it's more
| flexible than betting on chasing the animal to a specific pit.
|
| But I am surprised the pit method isn't mentioned at all as an
| option in the article.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| It's a question of a typical behavior of mammoth. One method
| would work if an encircled mammoth was apt to charge humans.
| The other method would work if a mammoth was prone to panic
| and always ran away from aggressors. Looking however at the
| size of the animal, I doubt if the latter was its survival
| strategy.
| brabel wrote:
| I think our ancestors may have made use of ropes and simple
| wooden frames to lift the spears and hold them at the right
| angle, from a safe distance.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| I doubt you'd have enough control or the right vantage point
| to strike a killing blow from the end of a rope. You need to
| puncture vitals or you'll just end up with a very angry
| mammoth with a spear sticking out of it. So "steering" the
| spear to the point of impact and reacting precisely in the
| last fraction of a second is important. A modern corollary
| might be trying to shoot clays by steering your shotgun with
| a rope.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| So long as you can survive the encounter, if you inflict
| any kind of decent wound, wouldn't the animal eventually
| die due to blood loss or infection? Not at metal as an
| immediate kill, but whatever works.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Even hitting vitals won't be "immediate", you'll still
| have some hectic moments/minutes dodging the thrashing
| mammoth. But if you don't strike a mortal blow the danger
| is much greater because the animal won't weaken and slow
| down. Instead it'll get pissed and probably fight back
| even harder.
| kiliantics wrote:
| I think rope, at least of any appreciable length and
| strength, is a much more modern technology.
| gv123 wrote:
| as shown in the movie 10,000 BC
| jcgrillo wrote:
| I wonder how common it was to be mortally injured by a breaking
| spear? If the spear is too heavy it's slow to move and less
| likely to result in a quick kill, if it's too light it'll break
| off without penetrating deep enough for a kill. Engineering
| trade-offs our ancestors must have pondered.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| "ground the spear and receive a charge" is spear knowledge 101 in
| HEMA communities. A butt-spike helps.
|
| It works so well that you're generally not allowed to do it in
| the full contact rulesets, because it's counterproductive to
| break your opponents today; you can't fight them tomorrow!
| soperj wrote:
| What does HEMA community refer to?
| octopoc wrote:
| Historical European martial arts
| vonrosen2000 wrote:
| Can be used on bears too.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5rhOfa8Woc
| krick wrote:
| Not to argue with anything, but after observing it for a while,
| I cannot treat HEMA seriously. And this is true about most of
| the "reconstruction" stuff. The problem is, that guys who "do"
| it are almost exclusively not the guys who would participate in
| city-level wrestling or even powerlifting competition. To say
| it bluntly, most of them don't have the most basic fitness
| level.
|
| The point of that entire activity is to learn by experience
| what is doable/not doable with some historic tools, and hence
| derive, how these tools were _probably_ used. But their
| learnings aren 't very valuable, since it's pretty evident they
| aren't anywhere near of strength and coordination of a trained
| person. I would bet a fucking (professional) figure skater
| would beat them with a stick.
|
| And this is super important, because the supposed original
| users of a given tool are almost exclusively supposed to be
| people trained to wield it daily from the childhood. Not to
| mention they wouldn't spend much time in front of a monitor
| ever.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Lots of people say this. Then they come to fighter practice,
| and when they can walk again, they tend to rethink their
| position.
|
| The overall fitness level of reenactors isn't great! Granted
| freely! but: skill does mean something.
|
| Mostly, also -- the people doing the most historical research
| tend to be the fittest. See:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afqhBODc_8U, e.g. are a
| pretty athletic bunch.
| dvh wrote:
| Something like this? https://www.autoweb.cz/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/08/lovci-mamu...
| hosh wrote:
| Running prey into nets, or in this case, pikes seem to be make
| more sense. The steppe nomads of Asia used mass volleys of arrows
| from horseback to harass and direct pret into prepared positions.
| Ranged weapons (thrown rocks, hunting clubs, bows and arrows) can
| fill those roles.
|
| I have my doubts that a spear launched by human muscle power
| would be effective against megafauna, although maybe with an
| atlatl?
| lupusreal wrote:
| I've seen a video of an African elephant being killed by a mob
| of people throwing spears at it. From one of those old
| exploitative Italian documentaries.
| forgot-im-old wrote:
| In the Yellowstone area they would also run them off cliffs.
| shellfishgene wrote:
| See also desert kites
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_kite), which you can
| still find on google maps, and were probably used for hunting.
| Lonestar1440 wrote:
| There's an "Ancient Hunters Overlook" in the badlands National
| Park, where the natives would hunt Buffalo by, well, running them
| off the overlook. Definitely beats trying your luck with a thrown
| spear.
|
| https://www.nps.gov/places/ancient-hunters.htm
| julianeon wrote:
| I wish they had been a little less good at this, to be honest.
| All the charismatic megafauna were killed off.
| pcurve wrote:
| That's true... but african elephant is fairly close in side to
| Wooly mammoth? (though with less majestic tusks)
| r14c wrote:
| don't worry, our current society is destroying way more species
| than those old fossils ever did!
| millerm wrote:
| Braveheart style. Nice.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDVuQi4gdtk
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