External ballistics of Pleistocene hand-thrown spears: experimental performance data and implications for human evolution.

ABSTRACT: The appearance of weaponry - technology designed to kill - is a critical but poorly established threshold in human evolution. It is an important behavioural marker representing evolutionary changes in ecology, cognition, language and social behaviours. While the earliest weapons are often considered to be hand-held and consequently short-ranged, the subsequent appearance of distance weapons is a crucial development. Projectiles are seen as an improvement over contact weapons, and are considered by some to have originated only with our own species in the Middle Stone Age and Upper Palaeolithic. Despite the importance of distance weapons in the emergence of full behavioral modernity, systematic experimentation using trained throwers to evaluate the ballistics of thrown spears during flight a

SUBMITTER: Milks A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6347593 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature