Humans and saber-toothed tiger met in Germany 300,000 years ago!

I sit in my living room enjoying my coffee I brew in a 60 yr old glass siphon.


I look at my self bow collection and reflect on the fact that for thousands of years man has been making wood bows.


I think of this article and just how long ago 300.000 years was.


I ponder upon the generations back that would be,


I round a generation to 50 yrs and that makes 60,000 generations since those spears / bows were used.



a Zen moment of contemplation on 60,000 or more generations back in time...




At this point you realize how important the science of archeology is, as so many of us in our society enjoy learning about the clues to the mostly forgotten history of man,

Amazing that wooden spears can be preserved for so long, and remain recognisable. They actually look like javelins with pointed ends - in other words the spears were designed to be thrown.

TrueAmerican
But wait, the Bible says the earth is at most less than ten thousand years old! Someone is lying.

Just to pull you up on this silly statement. The Bible gives no age of the earth. Some Christians believe the earth to be "young", but most don't. The age of the earth was estimated to be 6,000 years in c. C16. Before science and the evidence that it was rather older.

Regards

reply to post by paraphi


well you go against a saber tooth tiger while throwing a crooked spear...
let us know how it works out

as to the biblical story of creation...age or not, it appears to have some serious gaps in it.

ps
i showed you pics of bows that look like the pics in the OP
how about you just showing us some pics of actual double pointed crooked misshapen spears that match the pics in the OP...
that would be interesting

reply to post by Danbones


I began researching to see if I could find details on the dimensions of the spears in hopes of replicating them, I found some one beat me to it. I hope you enjoy reading this as Dane gets in touch with our past in replicating a Schöningen Spear!

Schöningen Spear Replication Project Please be advised that this is only a quick report to share what I learned in my first foray into stone technology. Later, I will repost a much better and more detailed report, along with testing results. But for now, enjoy. This is my first attempt at an all stone tool project. Someone posted a link to an article about four 400,000 year old hunting spears found in Germany in 1995. www.schoeningerspeere.de... is a link to the official website. You can actually scroll along to see one of the four spears in its entirety. What I am hoping to find later is exact dimensions of the spear, particularly the diameter of the distal and proximal ends. (note, using Google, you can hit translate from the site’s German to English, not perfect, but enough to understand the site if your German is as rudimentary as mine is). However, I had enough data to see if I could replicate one of the spears. I decided to make it about 7’ long. The archeologists feel that three of the four spears found at the site were throwing spears and not just thrusting spears.

source

This is not at all surprising. Fossilized human footprints and dinosaur tracks have been found side by side and on top of each other in many places around the earth. I've seen it in Texas. The only unbelievable thing about this is that these scientists still use their laughable dating techniques to give them the 300,000 years ago.

reply to post by yamammasamonkey


right, because it's certainly LESS silly than simply believing that humans and dinosaurs walked side by side without actually looking at any of the data that contradicts the superficial notion which flies in the face of not just convention but well studied and peer reviewed data. That must be the case because people can just look at something trivially and deduce its origins as factual because why screw with a good myth instead of exploring possibilities right?

A little more info:

The spears, deformed by the load of the sediment pressure, are made from slim, straight spruce stems – except for spear IV which is made from pine wood. Their dimensions are between 1.8 and 2.5 metres. They have been worked very thoroughly and are evidence of highly developed technological skills and of workmanlike tradition. Like in today’s tournament javelins, the greatest diameter and therefore its centre of gravity is in the front third of the shaft. The tips are worked symmetrically from the base of the stems, the end of the tips were worked beside the medullary ray, the weakest part of the stem, on purpose.

source

On 06 June 2004 at the invitation of the Association of Schöninger spears, the Avacon and the city Schoningen under the motto "From Stone Age hunters to the athletes " in Schöninger Elmstadion a special presentation instead . Citizens were able to use with athletes replicas of Schöninger spears, and test under race conditions . In addition to the spears and other hunting weapons, such as bows and arrows and boomerangs aboriginal came to use . The astonishing result: the Schöninger spears , whose age has been dated to up to 400,000 years, even the most modern weapons competition were absolutely equal . Another ( now practical ) proof of the uniqueness of the Schöninger spears. Because this supports the thesis that already the Homo heidelbergensis had collective hunting skills , which ensure strong social structures and sophisticated , creative thinking ( for the construction of Schöninger spears ) , had to be based . A big thanks go to Christiane Willeke sun Brodt for the provision of the photographic material .

source

good stuff AD
the amerindians made bows at least 5000 years ago i read and they only had textiles - cordage, and stone tools

but there is another possibility:
the atlatl

ACCELERATION
The basic mechanics of the system depend exclusively on the flexibility of the dart. When the dart is
accelerated by the atlatl it flexes and stores energy like a spring. At some point during the swing, after the
atlatl is no longer accelerating sufficiently to cause further compression of the dart, the dart then uses its
stored energy to push itself away from the atlatl. This allows the dart a smooth separation between itself
and the atlatl, giving it an effective and powerful launch.

www.pssurvival.com...
scroll down to page 30+
darn nice link

the weights ( i have seen a few around here, very nicely worked ) they say were mostly an amerindian thing, but atlatls themselves were used world wide...
having played around with basic atlatls too, I think flexibility might also explain the material choice too..springy wood

then there is atlatl bob who really figured out how atlatls really work
www.atlatl.com...
check out his reasoning and video..his accomplishments with what he figured out about atlatls are stunning
the difference between eating the bear or the bear eats you...lol

and yeah i am stretching things a bit...whats a forum for?

peter vlar
reply to post by yamammasamonkey

 

right, because it's certainly LESS silly than simply believing that humans and dinosaurs walked side by side without actually looking at any of the data that contradicts the superficial notion which flies in the face of not just convention but well studied and peer reviewed data. That must be the case because people can just look at something trivially and deduce its origins as factual because why screw with a good myth instead of exploring possibilities right?

hmmm ...easy does it big guy
coelacanths and all that...ya dig?

The last living relative of the coelacanth (“SEE-la-kanth”) disappeared 70 million years ago. The fish "returned" from its presumed extinction after fishermen captured one in 1938. This "living fossil" retains characteristics unlike those found in modern fish: hollow tail spines, fleshy fin bases, unique fin coordination, hinged skull, electroreceptor organ, and armored scales. Like some sharks, coelacanths bear live young.

Read more at news.mongabay.com...

Yale graduate student Stephen Chester discovered the last known dinosaur before the catastrophic meteor impact 65 million years ago.

www.ctvnews.ca...
then of course there is that famous stegosaurus carving on the temple wall in eurasia somewhere I keep seeing pics of around here

TrueAmerican
But wait, the Bible says the earth is at most less than ten thousand years old! Someone is lying.

benrl
Im going to go cook a steak over a roaring fire or do something rugged to make me feel better.

Where does it say that?

Just curious about the ignorance being spread.

This video shows what shows what some ancient men did as todays 'modern' tribes.

Ata... What?

If you are going to discuss Ancient Human technology, at least use the correct term.

The Spear throwing tool is called a Woomera.

It belongs to THE Oldest continuous human tribe on Planet Earth.

The same tribe that used flexible spears anywhere between 6 to 15 feet long, and used the "Throwing Stick" or Woomera for 10s of 1000s of years.

If, the big IF, these European early man used long flexible spears (unlike Africans), perhaps gives more credence to the theory, that the Australian Aborigines are indeed, early Europeans who migrated across the lower Asian continent, and mixed with others, to produce the East Asians, North Americans etc etc.

www.aboriginalculture.com.au...

www.youtube.com...

austhrutime.com...

ALSO Note that the first 23 seconds of the above "African" film clip the people shown are NOT AFRICAN!!!!
They are AUSTRALIAN NATIVE people of the Northern Tundra...Note he is using a WOOMERA when he spears the buffalo, very accurately and powerfully, unlike the messy confused effort of the Africans.
I cant speak Italian, but i think the narrator even says "Australi".

reply to post by gort51


Atlatl, it's a real word, and a real weapon lol.


Hmmm, you know, I never noticed how many different tribes all over the world have their very own version of the atlatl, or whatever you want to call it.
It is pretty interesting stuff eh?

Same with the club and bow too. I have seen so many different versions, made out of all kinds of different materials.

reply to post by TKDRL

smokin TK
that eyeball shot was pretty darn good

and Gort; aussie stuff is always unique and interesting
the thing about atlatl bob is he figured out the concept of the flexible dart which makes the atlatl/woomera
a much more formidable rig then a solid dart would



and SH interesting to see the spears in action...
looks like the ones in the vid aren't double ended

reply to post by gort51


The Australian spear throwing multi tool is called a woomera, and is only tracable back 5000 years. It was also a multi tool, it was used a knife or a bowl and likely a spade as well.
Whereas the new world spearthrower or atlatl has good documentation going back at least 15k years and is a task specific tool. The European spear thrower goes back 22k years. There is circumstantial evidence that new world spear throwers go back that far.

reply to post by punkinworks10


thats interesting PK
5000 years?..thats the age of the bow in amerindia at the moment
we also have white skinned red haired bog bodies in flourida and world wide sea travel around that time
see my siggy thread

So,
Back to the original discussion,
The article states that 3 of the 4 spear found were throwing spears. This is very interesting, as they are attributed to homo heidlburgensis/denisovans, because homo neanderthalis was physically incapable of overhand throwing.
The dating of the spears puts them within the window of divergence between Hh and Hsn.
So , are we looking at Hh before they diverged into Hsn? Also I was browsing an anthropology site, and one of the posters made an interesting comment, he suggests that Homo sapiens neanderthalis a cross of homo heidlburgensis and very early anatomically modern humans, or near modern humans.
In my opinion Hsn is an adaptation to a lifestyle in a colder northern conifer forest.
Their physiology is certainly adapted to a colder environment, and it is well suited to an ambush hunter methodology, as compared to pursuit hunting.
I have come by this notion through my own experience hunting in the densely forested sierra Nevada of California. In the dense forest you might not have 30 feet of clear shot, so you have to ambush your prey. When I was younger I was an avid bow hunter, and the region I hunted was so dense that the only way to successfully hunt was to hike out to your hide, in the middle of the night. I usually picked a hide near a water trail, and would get there about 2-3 am and wait for the game to come by. If you tried to move around to find game, you would come up empty.
Hsn's physiology was well suited to this kind of hunting, compared to pursuit hunters who run down their prey. They are longer limbed and of lighter build, built to run.

Danbones
reply to post by punkinworks10

 

thats interesting PK
5000 years?..thats the age of the bow in amerindia at the moment
we also have white skinned red haired bog bodies in flourida and world wide sea travel around that time
see my siggy thread

Hey there DB,
I have questions of the dating and source of the use of bows in the new world. With some eastern tribes they only took up the use of bows within the last 1500 years, that is very odd, as there are projectile points whose only purpose would be an arrow point, going back almost 15k years.

Sasha Siemel killed jaguars with spears on many occasions in the past century

reply to post by Tusks

A man among men, Sasha killed over 300 of those cats, most killed using a spear. The accounts that I have read, including his own, say that he preferred to have the jaguars pounce at him after his dogs had treed them, at which point he would run the spear through them.
Apparently the man had a real set of cojones.