Prehistoric people may have used throwing spears to hunt large animals 300,000 years ago 鈥� and perhaps as far back as 2 million years ago. A new analysis of preserved wooden spears indicates they could be thrown over medium distances, as well as used for thrusting.
鈥淭raditionally, you would say thrusting is more simple than throwing, as a technological concept,鈥� says at the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage in Hanover, Germany. 鈥淵ou have to understand aerodynamics for throwing to be successful.鈥� For this reason, archaeologists have tended to assume that hominins first used spears for close-range attacks like stabbing, he says, and only later threw them like javelins.
Most of the time, archaeologists don鈥檛 have entire spears to examine because the wood has rotted away 鈥� they just have the sharp stones used as the spears鈥� points. To determine how these stone tips were used, researchers have studied their cross-sectional area.
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In the 1990s and 2000s, it seemed like this technique could distinguish between throwing and thrusting spears, says Leder. However, as more spear points from modern human groups were studied, it became clear that there were huge overlaps. 鈥淭his renders the entire method useless,鈥� he says.
However, there are also a handful of preserved wooden spears: a from 400,000 years ago, 听补苍诲 , also in Germany.
In a pair of studies published in 2022, at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa and her colleagues alongside other spear tips and concluded that . The implication was that throwing spears came later.
Leder, with at the University of Reading in the UK, argues that this is wrong. For one thing, Lombard and her team used measurements of the width of the spear tips that are probably overestimates, they say. When this and other supposed errors are corrected, the wooden spears no longer look like unambiguous thrusting weapons, say Leder and Milks.
To figure out how the wooden spears were used, the pair used a different measure: the point of balance. 鈥淲henever you throw a spear, you want it to go down into the prey, rather than flying across,鈥� says Leder. Throwing spears therefore have their point of balance in the front half. On this measurement, the Lehringen shaft looks like a thrusting spear, but those from Sch枚ningen were suitable for throwing. The Clacton spear could not be classified because only a small fragment survives.
This means hominins were using throwing spears at least 300,000 years ago, says Leder.
Lombard says her more recent work supports this timeline. In November 2024, with at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, she published . The work suggests that, before about 464,000 years ago, 鈥渉unters used contact weapons whilst starting to experiment with throwing them over short distances of up to 10 metres鈥�, says Lombard. By 300,000 to 243,000 years ago, 鈥渉unters also started to experiment with medium-range hunting by throwing their weapons over distances of up to 19 metres鈥�, she says.
For Lombard, the key distinction is between medium-range hunting over 10 to 20 metres 鈥� which is what Leder and Milks argue the Sch枚ningen spears could have been used for 鈥� and long-range javelin hunting over 20 to 30 metres, which is what Lombard was assessing in her 2022 studies. It is hard to be sure when javelin hunting began because there isn鈥檛 data for 243,000 to 191,000 years ago, she says.
Evidence of hominins hunting large animals for meat goes back much further, to 2 million years ago. Leder says throwing spears may well be that old, but 鈥渨e don鈥檛 have the preservation of wooden spears for this very long time frame鈥�.
He argues that thrusting spears are an impractical way to hunt large animals 鈥� which either run away at the slightest disturbance, like a gazelle, or aggressively charge their attacker, like an elephant. Leder says videos of African hunters show teams of about 20 people hurling spears at elephants for minutes at a time, until the animal collapses and one of them can go in for the kill. 鈥淚 would say throwing spears is certainly safer,鈥� he says.
Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology
