Prehistoric hunters are often portrayed as groups of men who hurl spears and thrust weapons, using sheer strength to bring down massive creatures like woolly mammoth and mastodon.
However, recent studies are challenging the story of how people during the Ice Age in North America hunted from around 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. Archaeologists propose that these ancient inhabitants inserted long, spear-like projectiles tipped with sharpened stones into the earth at an incline. This setup was designed both to pierce approaching animals and protect against threats such as saber-toothed cats.
Even the mightiest Homo sapiens hurling a spear would have felt akin to pricking an enormous mammoth with a needle. However, piercing it with a reinforced pike could deliver impact tenfold stronger, based on tests conducted using reproductions and calculations of the creature’s motion.
“There’s something irresistibly appealing about the concept of utilizing its mass against itself when it charges towards you,” stated Jun Sunseri, an archaeologist from the University of California, Berkeley, who was also a co-author of a research paper on these weapons. The study appeared in the journal PLOS One recently.
About 13,000 years ago in North America, the preferred weapon tip was what archaeologists refer to as the Clovis point—a sharp-edged stone tool crafted with notched sides. This type of projectile point gets its name from the location where it was initially discovered almost a century ago near Clovis, New Mexico. Numerous Clovis points have since been unearthed throughout the region; these artifacts range up to the size of a modern smartphone. Some examples have even been found embedded within prehistoric animal bones like those of woolly mammoths.
Creating such items from materials like flint, chert, or basalt requires considerable time, as stated by Scott Byram, a co-author of the study. Therefore, it makes sense that hunters would be cautious about risking damage during a spear throw or losing one when an injured mammoth escapes with the tool still stuck in its skin.
Scientists haven’t discovered a fully preserved Clovis point-mounted weapon; the wooden shafts that probably accompanied these points would have decomposed over time, leaving researchers to speculate about their usage.
However, Clovis points have frequently been found along with shorter bone shafts made from materials such as mammoth thigh bones. According to the researchers behind this study, these one-foot sections of bone were likely tied onto the tips of 10-foot long spears to secure the points. Their tests indicate that when the spear struck a mammoth, the bone fragment was designed to detach from the wooden shaft, enlarging the creature’s injury while protecting the Clovis point. This design allowed for the reuse of the valuable projectile tip.
This kind of tool would have enabled all ancient humans—no matter their age, gender, size, or physical strength—to confront even the biggest creatures from the Ice Age, as stated by Sunseri.
This might have allowed them to extend their territory for hunting purposes as well.
“If you manage not to drop your Clovis point each time you try to make a kill, you can afford to do some extra scouting and exploring,” he stated.
Send an email to Aylin Woodward at aylin.woodward@wsj.com
