Scientists claim cavemen ‘didn’t throw their spears while hunting’

New research suggests cavemen wedged one end of a weapon into the ground to inflict more damage. Photo / Getty Images

Cavemen did not hunt mammoths by throwing spears but instead wedged one end of the weapon into the ground to inflict more damage, a study has suggested.

Archaeologists have long known that ancient humans used long weapons made of wood and bone to kill large animals but new research challenges the belief that they were launched as projectiles.

It suggests the weapons were wielded as pikes during the Ice Age 13,000 years ago and the sharpened rocks known as Clovis points at the tip would pierce the animal’s flesh.

Experiments revealed this technique uses the mass and speed of the charging animal against it and imparts more than 10 times greater force than can be achieved with a spear thrust.

“The kind of energy that you can generate with the human arm is nothing like the kind of energy generated by a charging animal,” said Jun Sunseri, a University of California Berkeley associate professor of anthropology and the study’s co-author.

“It’s an order of magnitude different. These spears were engineered to do what they’re doing to protect the user.”

The study’s authors said the technique removed much of the need for physical strength and athleticism, and could be used by an adult to target mammoths or by a juvenile to slay bears.

However, they added that the ability to kill large predators with a pike “would have necessitated enormous skill and resolve”.

“The Clovis pike may have been an innovation in weapon technology especially suited to highly mobile small hunter-gatherer groups encountering numerous megafauna species during a period of massive environmental change in Late Pleistocene North America,” the authors wrote in their paper, which was published in the journal Plos One.

‘Replica mammoth’ plans

The researchers reviewed historical evidence from around the world about how people hunted with pikes, spanning from Alexander the Great’s battles to 19th-century Russians hunting bears, as well as 16th-century cavalry warfare.

They also ran the first experimental study of stone weapons that focused on pike-hunting techniques. It involved building a test platform to measure the force a spear system could withstand before the point snapped or the shaft expanded.

This allowed them to test how different spears reached their breaking points and how the expansion system responded.

In the coming months, the researchers plan to further test their theory by building something akin to a replica mammoth.

By doing this, they hope to simulate what an attack might have looked like when a planted Clovis-tipped pike made an impact with a massive, fast-moving mammal.

“This ancient Native American design was an amazing innovation in hunting strategies,” said Scott Byram, the study’s lead author.

“This distinctive indigenous technology is providing a window into hunting and survival techniques used for millennia throughout much of the world.”