Posted on 11/15/2012 12:05:23 PM PST by Red Badger
This is a ~500,000-year-old point from Kathu Pan 1. Multiple lines of evidence from a University of Toronto-led study indicate that points from Kathu Pan 1 were used as hafted spear tips. Scale bar = 1 cm. Credit: Jayne Wilkins
These are examples of experimental hafted points from a University of Toronto-led study. Points were hafted to wooden dowels using Acacia resin and sinew and then thrust into a springbok carcass target using a calibrated crossbow. The Kathu Pan 1 archaeological points show a similar pattern of edge damage to these experimental points. Credit: Jayne Wilkins
This is a mounted crossbow used for spearing experiments in a University of Toronto-led study that showed that ~500,000-year-old points from Kathu Pan 1 were used as hafted spear tips. Credit: Benjamin Schoville
GGG Ping!.............
Oh, why not make it three million years ago? Or sixteen million? As long as we're making up numbers, why not shoot for the moon? A billion years ago!
All these dating guesses are based on a very shaky presuppositon: i.e., that the method used for dating would hold true all the way back to the beginning, that nothing intervened to skew the data and thus make the methodology suspect, and that there could be no other explanation possible for the data observed.
Not trying to call into question their methods of study, but what? They are using a calibrated crossbow to study how the points break?
I spent many a day as a young girl trying to throw a spear, being a young girl I obviously was flawed but I did learn something from that, besides the fact that I didn’t have the strength to stay alive from spear kills...it’s very hard to throw a spear straight. Even when the shaft is very straight, it’s like golf, every inflection of your muscle movement affects the trajectory and the shaft definitely hasn’t a straight line. In fact some of the weight of the shaft is different at different portions of it, affecting it’s direction.
How can a machine tell them what the results of a man thrown spear would be...and I say man because I already know, a girl couldn’t kill a rabbit with it for a few months, but hey, it’s nice to be thin;)
The base of the dart is carefully located on the spur of the atlatl, so that it can rotate during launch
They know how old the rock is, but how do they know when the rock became an arrowhead?
And they know how to date the surrounding soil, but how do they know when something came to reside in that soil? When did humans first invent burying stuff?
I know what you mean. I ince had one of those ball and cap Pennsylvania rifles and I used to practice with it. Found out that if I had lived back in the day I0d have probaly starved to death.
Did they verify these theories with Helen Thomas or Madonna or other people who are 500,000 years old?
Maybe look at spears more as a hand to hand tool. I’ve seen people spear fish. Why not other critters.
Krog say woman not that tall. Shadow is trick.
I assume that the arrowheads were embedded in some organic material that could be reliably dated, but carbon dating is good only for about 50k years. After that you have to use some other method..............
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating
It’s because a “scientist” said so!
Brog say hairy woman in back keep you warmer in winter...
I’m always screaming about this “dating” bit with the same logic. In 1989, I was on a lonely road in Virginia, got out and with real mason tools, carved 1789 and initials in an old boulder just a bit off the road....I would love it if someone defined the initials and date someday...and it got a big write up.
And you can’t date rock. The points can only be aged by associating them with things around them, often charcoal from campfires, etc.
Association has to be done with extreme care because campsites are found in the same places, for the same reasons, from wildly differing eras.
Sometimes you get lucky, like the guy who found the first Folsom point embedded in the bone of an extinct species of Bison. But thats rare.
Save these spear tips. The way the obama economy is going we may need them.
We can make more...............
Stones are very hard to date directly. They are likely dating them from the layer they are imbedded in. If you look at the positions and how they were documented and found, you could make a determination if they had a good case or not.
I know what you mean. I ince had one of those ball and cap Pennsylvania rifles and I used to practice with it. Found out that if I had lived back in the day I0d have probaly starved to death.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/indians/offense.html
Mark Twain wrote about the outlandish and ridiculous claims of frontier markmanship by the pioneers. You might enjoy it.
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