i remember reading how eskimos would wrap sharp bone fragments in balls of fat and leave them for polar bears… then they would follow the bears until they died of internal bleeding.
elephants are much smarter than bears though.
Brutal
Pikes were used much the same way right? Surprised I never put the two together, ancient humans weren’t stupid so of course they’d realize that was a better way of causing harm than just throwing it. Not to mention their use of leverage in weapons like the Atlatl. No clue on the timespan of these things but I do find this stuff interesting.
I’m sure so much of our history is more or less completely unknowable simply because the remains all degraded quickly.
How many things made out of wood that simply rotted away, or burned or any one of a thousand things.
Stone tools were a game changer in every sense.
I would posit string being the real game changer. How do you think they got the stone on the end of a stick?
Honest answer, usually animal sinew, or certain grasses could be used as well. The nice thing with string, once it was figured out was you could make as much as you could, and make it as long as you wanted.
I totally count sinew as string. That probably led to plant string. Think about really fine string, or thread, and think about how many miles of it you carry around on you every day. It’s crazy how taken for granted it is!
I always pictured mammoths being more docile: disinclined to charge. Didn’t realize they could be more of a wooly bully.
Wooly bully?
Watch it now, watch it!
The grooves carved into each point could allow it to slide down the shaft upon impact. A fixed point, by contrast, would be more likely to shatter when it hit dense material, especially bone.
This is really interesting. And to further illustrate just how much we have no idea and might be wildly wrong, there’s an incredible book, All Yesterdays, which reimagines prehistoric animals in interesting new ways. The second half of the book shows possible recreations of contemporary animals based solely on their skeletons to really drive home the point at how much guessing is involved in this field. Some of the images can be found here.
This is a rhino skeleton (wtf):
We do know a lot more about mammoths though, because they have been found frozen in good condition in Siberia.
There were some cave lions found several years ago, too. Cubs.
