December 26, 2023 • 54 mins
Focusing on the human animal, Robert and Joe continue their discussion of throwing ability and ponder how throwing ability may have impacted everything from language to ancient warfare. (originally published 01/12/2023)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I am Joe McCormick, and Rob and I are
out this week, so we're bringing you an episode from
the vault. This is sort of part four in our
series that we started reairing last week about throwing behaviors
in non human animals. But here we're getting, of course,
to the emergence of throwing behaviors in humans and human ancestors.
I hope you enjoy and oh this one originally published
(00:30):
January twelfth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part four
of our series on throwing behavior. Now, in previous parts
we focused mainly on non human animals. We've looked at
alleged throwing behaviors in octopuses, in elephants, in the mongoose.
We definitely had a digression about dogs with air Bud
(01:10):
in the previous episode. But also in the previous episode
we ended up talking about the evolution of the human
capacity for throwing, which we are particularly apt at Humans
are very good at throwing, especially compared to our nearest
primate relatives. So like a chimpanzee maybe on average three
(01:30):
or four times stronger than a human, But a human,
even without specialized training, can generally throw a lot more
forcefully and a lot better than a chimpanzee can. So
why are we so specialized for throwing? Well, we took
a look at some evolutionary hypotheses about where our capacity
for throwing comes from. But there was another thing that
I came across while researching this subject that I did
(01:53):
not get into in the previous episode, and I wanted
to come back to it here because I found it
really interesting. And this is the idea of what if
the evolution of throwing was somehow a necessary precursor for
the evolution of probably the most distinctly human trait language,
(02:13):
So not just that humans are good at throwing and
good at language, but that there is actually a neurobiological
link between the two one comes from the other. So
to look at this question, I wanted to refer to
a paper by William D. Hopkins, Jamie L. Russell, and
Jennifer A. Schaeffer published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
(02:36):
Society b Biological Sciences, published in twenty twelve, called the
Neural and Cognitive Correlates of Aimed Throwing in Chimpanzees a magnetic, resonance, image,
and behavioral study on a unique form of social tool use.
So to begin, they cover some of the same ground
we did in the previous episode. You know how unusual
(02:59):
he when throwing behavior is in a way, and despite
all the interesting examples we've discussed in these episodes of
animals throwing things for various reasons, whether trained by humans
or just doing it as part of their natural instinctual behaviors,
the authors here argue that in general, throwing remains unsystematic,
in their words, in other animals, And I think this
is fair. No other animal practices the kind of generalized,
(03:24):
skillful habitual throwing that we do, certainly not without training
by humans.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, as we discussed in the previous episode, it goes
way back in human behavior, and it's something that even today,
with all our other tools and ways of doing things
at a distance, we still engage in throwing. I think
in the very first episode we discussed that sort of
at least in my case, this strange pull to need
(03:51):
to throw a ball with my son when he was younger,
even though we're not a baseball or softball family. But
it was just kind of the thing that I guess
was like nostalgic in the culture, but also very satisfying
to do and something that even if you're not very
practiced at you can do with some or at least
I found that I could do with some degree of precision,
(04:12):
despite being very rusty at the whole softball baseball thing.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I totally sympathize with you there. I mean, I think
neither of us are really sports guys. I don't really
want rules, I don't really want teams, but I do
want ball or frisbee. Frisbee just as good in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, And I mean there's also there's a lot more
throwing that goes on too, Like how often do we
find ourselves across the room from someone We request something
and they give it a tok, they throw it to us,
and you want to be able to catch it for
various reasons. And then that's without even getting into the
various sports that even if we don't engage in, we
may watch and the throwing of balls is often an
(04:51):
essential part, or at least one aspect of a given
sport right.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
But of course, apart from these recreational concerns, you know,
throwing has been crucial to the survival of our ancestors.
That seems pretty clear. And in the last episode we
talked about arguments from evolutionary anthropology that throwing was positively
selected for in human ancestors, and the bodies of hominin
species like Homo erectus show anatomical changes that seem to
(05:18):
favor forceful overhand throwing. I remember those changes. They're changes
in the shoulder and the waist and the upper arm,
all of which combined to allow for a more substantial
wind up, sort of a pulling back of tension of
the biomechanical bowstring to be released rapidly during the throw.
(05:38):
And we also talked about the argument that these changes
appear to coincide with evidence of meat becoming a bigger
part of the diet of these hominins, showing that throwing
was likely useful for obtaining food, either through power scavenging
like driving predators away from a kill in order to
take the meat for yourself, or direct hunting, and either
(05:59):
way increasing the availability of food energy. Now, one very
interesting thing about the adaptation for throwing is that it
implies not only changes in the muscles and the skeletal system.
Of course, you know, you can see all those changes
around the scapula and the shoulder blade, changes in the waist,
the arm, and so forth, But it also implies changes
(06:20):
in cognition. An animal that can throw objects sourced from
the environment is showing a specialized way of thinking, and
not just a specialized way of moving. Now what do
I mean by this? Well, as one example, the authors
reference a specific captive chimpanzee who came up in the
last episode. Robie, remember the story of Santino, the chimpanzee
(06:43):
who was in a zoo and I believe Sweden was it?
Speaker 1 (06:46):
I believe?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
So, yes, Ip Santino, Yeah, poor Santino. The authors right
that Santino, who I guess was alive at the time
this paper was written. Quote hydes rocks out of sight
of the care staff, waiting to reveal and throw them
at approaching visitors at the most opportune time. Evidence of
planning comes from the observation that Santino searches for the
(07:08):
rocks from a moat inside the enclosure prior to the
arrival of the care staff and the visitors, and cashes
the rocks out of sight, only to pull them out
when the visitors arrive. That is a crafty chimp, and
that is forethought. Adding to this, the authors throw in
their own observations of similar pre planning behavior in chimpanzees
(07:32):
in two other research environments, and they argue that the
throwing quote, though often agonistic in function and consequence, agonistic
meaningless confrontational aggressive behavior, is not part of the ape's
display behavior. Indeed, most instances of aimed throwing that we
have observed occur without any accompanying display behavior such as
(07:53):
pilo erection, hooting, and charging, further suggesting an element of
planning on the part of the individual ape. So I
think that's interesting too if you understand what they're saying there,
that there is a sort of standard display behavior algorithm,
like when an ape is doing an agonistic display when
trying to be dominant and aggressive and maybe scare you off.
(08:17):
It includes all of these sub features like the pilo
erection meaning the bristling of body hair, hair stands on end, hooting,
charging back and forth, all that stuff. And they say
that when the apes throw stuff at people, they do
it without all of these other features of a typical
instinctual display. Another way that throwing is different from most
other forms of tool use and apes. The most commonly
(08:40):
observed types of tool use by wild chimpanzees are all
things where the tool is used to extract otherwise unreachable food,
often like from a hole or enclosure of some kind,
and then is eaten immediately. So examples here would be
cracking of nuts with stones like nut cracking is an
example of ape tool use, but also termite fishing with sticks,
(09:02):
ant dipping, and so forth. All of these give rise
to an immediate food reward for executing the behavior, meaning
that these behaviors are subject to regular operant conditioning rules.
You know, if a behavior leads to an immediate food reward,
an animal can learn to repeat basically any arbitrary set
(09:23):
of actions. So you know, chimpanzee gets delicious termites every
time it. Of course, if it dips for them, that's
one thing. But maybe if it stands on one foot
and gets termites every time, it may learn to stand
on one foot to get the meat.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah, and we see this reflected and so many experiments
involving animals over the years. You know, can you get
an animal to manipulate some sort of technological gadget in
order to get a food reward.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, pressing a button or something that would have no
relevance in the natural environment. So other tool use behaviors
could easily be learned and reinforced through this kind of conditioning.
But throwing, as practiced by apes does not lead to
an immediate food reward. In fact, it rarely, if ever,
leads to a food reward at all the author's right quote.
(10:12):
What appears to be the main reward for throwing is
the simple ability to control or manipulate the behavior of
the targeted individual ape or human, which, though you could
consider it a goal, I mean that is much more
complicated and ambiguous than a direct food reward.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, because it's not like the ape in this scenario
is throwing the rock, hitting the human, and then by
hitting the human they drop an apple, right.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah. Now, from here, the authors go on to discuss
the underappreciated complexity of throwing. We also talked about this
at length in the previous episode. But you know, suffice
to say, force full, precise overhand throwing is an extremely
demanding task, not only for the muscles but for the brain,
requiring split second coordination of perceptual judgments all kinds of things.
(11:04):
You know, how far away is the target, is it
moving in what direction? And how fast? What are the
physical properties of the projectile and so forth. But then
the other thing is the sequential motor control. To throw
an object, you have to precisely time a rapid sequence
of muscular movements, and other authors have previously suggested that
(11:28):
quote the increased selection for neural synchrony of rapid muscular sequencing.
Routines associated with actions such as throwing are similar to
the motor programming demands of language and speech, and therefore
engage similar neural systems, notably Broca's area. In other words,
(11:50):
there are similarities between what the brain is doing and
what parts of the brain are being used to coordinate
a throw and to process language and speech. And one
idea that gets wrapped up in this is the role
of brain lateralization, segmenting of brain processes to one hemisphere
(12:10):
or side of the brain or the other. So in
cultures where throwing behavior has been studied, the authors say
the majority of people pretty much always prefer to throw
with the right hand. Studies in chimpanzees also show a
bias toward right handedness for throwing, and these right hand
preferences suggest left hemisphere dominance in the brain in these
(12:31):
majorities of both populations, because when it comes to controlling
the body's movements, of course, you know, the hemispheres are flipped. Generally,
the left hemisphere links to the right hand, the right
hemisphere to the left, and so forth. Some researchers have
pointed this out in the context of the fact that
the left hemisphere also contains the brain regions, notably Broca's area,
(12:54):
that dominate the production of speech. Broker's area is also
known as the motor speech area, and one researcher who
has focused on this is the American neurophysiologist William H. Calvin,
who was actually, I think maybe still is a professor
at the University of Washington at Seattle, who observing that
(13:14):
eighty nine percent of people prefer to throw with the
right arm, Calvin hypothesized that the left hemispher's capacity for
language may have actually evolved from a pre existing adaptation
for right handed throwing. He apparently published a book that
contained this hypothesis. In nineteen eighty three, it was called
(13:35):
The Throwing Madonna.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Oh didn't they adapted this into the film a lead
of their own right?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Was Madonna in that?
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I believe?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Oh, okay? Was she the picture in the movie?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Ah? Oh, I don't remember, but I mean surely she
threw a ball at least once. I mean there's a
lot of throwing in baseball.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, you throw, no matter what position you are. I
guess the picture throws the most.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
There's no crying in baseball, but there was throwing in baseball.
There's a lot that much. I remember for the film.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Okay, so Madonna was definitely throwing, no matter what position
she played. No, but it unfortunately did not become the
basis of the movie as far as I know. Instead,
it was a place where Calvin laid out an interesting
sort of story, a possible series of developments that could
have led to the development of language via the stepping
(14:25):
stone of capacity for throwing. So the story goes like this,
lateralization evolved for one handed throwing with the right hand,
specifically so that parents, typically mothers, could cradle an infant
on their left side and then they'd be free to
throw with the right hand if they needed to. So,
(14:49):
I mean, obviously things like this are hard to prove
for sure, but that is an interesting idea because I
started thinking about how I recently became a father, and
without thinking about it at all, I pretty much always
when I hold my baby, hold her on the left
side of my torso, and so if she like falls
asleep against me, her head is going to be on
(15:11):
the left side of my chest and from my point
of view, which is also the side where the heartbeat
is closer. I never planned it that way, that that
just sort of happened, and I was talking to my
wife and she said, yeah, most often she's on the
left side there too, So I don't know that that's
kind of interesting. I mean, it could be totally unrelated,
(15:32):
but I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would always scoop up on the
left side as well. My son is now I think
finally too big for me to do that without seriously
injuring myself.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
But yes, and I guess at a certain point you
become less desiring of the heartbeat sound that like maybe
loses some of the power it has over really young infants.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, I don't know. I guess it varies from child
to child, depends on how big they get and at
what point they want that distance.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Okay, well, so it's hard to know for sure if
the need to scoop a child and hold them on
the left side of the body, close to the heartbeat
is the real reason driving brain lateralization. I find it
more compelling than some other hypotheses that seemed to be
on offer at the time, one that cited I was
reading a review of this book by Calvin that cited
(16:30):
a previous hypothesis that the right handedness evolved because men
in battle I guess prehistoric battle needed to hold a
shield above their above their heart on the left side.
I was like, I get out of here.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
This discussion reminds me of a painting, an eighteen eighty
eight painting that I hadn't thought of in a bit,
I believe what if The title of this piece is
Two Mothers by Leon Maxim of Favre. I'm pronouncing that correctly.
It's f A I v R. But it's a pretty
stunning piece in which we see this vision of a
(17:10):
of a prehistoric mother with very modern touches to it.
But she's standing here in some sort of a you know,
a hide garment, and she has this heavy looking infant
in her left arm, and then there's another child sort
of hanging on to her left arm. In her right hand,
she has uh like some sort of a stone weapon,
(17:33):
like a wooden half with a with a stone blade,
some sort of like you know, primitive acts or club.
And she's staring back into the shadows behind her with
there's this kind of like cave environment, and there's clearly
an animal lurking there or an animal emerging from the shadows.
And I think this is supposed to be the other mother,
(17:54):
the mother that is hunting her. And I have no
idea of this. This this piece has has any connection
what we're talking about here, But it is interesting that
we do see left arm cradling children, right arm brandishing
a weapon to protect those children against some threat.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
It is a kind of beautiful painting. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, her hair is perfect too, like this mom's really
got it together, perfect hair, protecting the children, ready to
brain a panther with some sort of a stone weapon.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Anyway, whatever the cause of the right hand lateralization for
sequential motor control in throwing, The hypothesis goes on from
here to suggest that sequential motor control regions that made
us so good at tossing a stone with one hand
were eventually commondeered by selection pressure for communication and shifted
(18:47):
to a different kind of sequential motor control, which was
language production. Now, when we think of language production, we
think of speech, and that could be the case. I
think Calvin argued for a transitional state where the original
language was more gesture based, like gesturing with the hands maybe,
which would have then transitioned into speech production with the mouth. Again,
(19:10):
like many things here, that's not something we know for sure,
so we're in very speculative territory. But I do find
this really interesting. So again, if there's anything to this story,
it would go that for some reason, there is an
original right hand left brain motor lateralization for the majority
of the population for throwing objects. Human ancestors get really
good at throwing with that one hand, maybe cradling a
(19:32):
baby in the other arm or doing something else. And
then you could argue that the lateralization for precise sequential
motor activity and the left brain to power throwing eventually
provides the neurological scaffolding for the left brain's capacity for
language and speech. Now, what was the actual experiment in
(19:53):
this study, Well, it was looking at our closest primate
relatives to see if they could provide any insight on
what might have been going on in the brains of
very distant human ancestors. So they were looking at chimpanzees. Now, again,
chimpanzees don't throw nearly as well or as often as
we do, but some throw sometimes, So what if anything
(20:15):
is different in the brains of chimpanzees that reliably throw
versus those that don't. Specifically, the authors looked at the
ratio of two different types of brain tissue, white matter
and gray matter in the areas of chimpanzee brains that
would be most similar to the areas of the human
brain involved in motor control for throwing and for speech.
(20:38):
And this would be quote the homologue to Broca's area.
I remember again Broker's areas involved in speech production in humans.
And then they also say as well as the motor
hand area of the precentral gyrus termed the knob, K
and OB. And what they found was that in both
of these areas, in the chimpanzee equivalent of Broker's area
(20:58):
and in the knob. The ratio of white matter to
gray matter was higher in chimpanzees that throw versus those
that don't. Also quote, we further found that asymmetries in
white matter within both brain regions were larger in the
hemisphere contralateral to the chimpanzee's preferred throwing hand. So what
(21:20):
they're saying is it's not just that the ratio of
white matter was higher in these regions on both sides
of the brain. It's that whichever hand the chimpanzee liked
to throw with those particular regions had a higher proportion
of white matter on the opposite side of the brain. Also,
they assessed the chimpanzees in this study with what is
(21:41):
called a Primate Cognition Test BATTERY or pct B, which is,
you know, a sort of an SAT for chimpanzees, standard
tests on all kinds of mental abilities, you know, tons
of things, spatial memory, causality, inference, tool property, recognition, gaze following,
and so forth. And they were looking at, well, are
(22:03):
there any differences between apes that throw and apes that
don't throw? And out of this entire test battery generally
not generally, there were no cognitive differences except in one area.
There was only one aptitude where there was a significant difference,
and it was that researchers found chimpanzees that were more
(22:23):
inclined to throw were also better at social communication. So
the author's right quote. These results suggest that chimpanzees that
have learned to throw have developed greater cortical connectivity that's
correlating with the white matter between the primary motor cortex
and the Broca's area. Homologue, it is suggested that during
(22:45):
hominine evolution, after the split between lines leading to chimpanzees
and humans, there was intense selection on increased motor skills
associated with throwing, and that this potentially formed the foundation
for left hemisphere specialization associated with language and speech found
in modern humans. So this is another case where I
(23:06):
think this is far from proven. We would need much
more robust evidence before you could endorse this specific evolutionary
story as likely. But I find this very intriguing and
it does seem possible to me that the capacity for
throwing gave rise to the capacity for language.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
So ape throws the bone, the bone spins around the
bone becomes a space station, just as Kubrick promised us.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, I didn't think about that.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yeah, I want to get back into this idea of
early humans, especially throwing stones as weapons and throwing other
things as weapons. You know, as we discussed in the
last episode, we talked about some of the ideas concerning
the development of ranged weapon technology and prehistoric humans. This
idea that what first begins as a way of engaging
(23:54):
in agonistic communication could transform into just a way of
physically sin a message to another species via projectile. But
then eventually that begins to get into this way to
manipulate their behavior at range, especially in the case of
power scavenging, and ultimately it could be used as a
way to hunt prey animals. Right, And as we were
(24:15):
actually recording that episode, my mind kept turning to these
images of some sort of prehistoric warfare scenario in which
some you know, entirely too kubricky prehistoric people were employing
various weapons and kind of probably also probably a slightly
two table top war game manner where you have you know,
units of bone wielding beaters moving forward to engage in
(24:38):
some melee attacks, and then maybe you have some units
of rock throwers behind them, and you know this this
felt kind of silly in my head, maybe even a
little Gary Larson esque in my head, a little farside.
But then I started looking into it more because, of course,
you know, rock throwers were an important part of our history,
(24:58):
and when you start looking at into the history of
not only range weaponry, but hand range weaponry, it gets
pretty fascinating.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Well yeah, I mean, I think one of the main
things that striking is rediscovering how potent to force simple
thrown objects are, even in an era where powered projectile
technology like bows or crossbows or even guns exist.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
When you think of somebody's throwing rocks, there at least
can be this sort of feeling that it's like a
juvenile sort of thing, that it's primitive, that it's a nuisance.
But on the other hand, I think most of us
realize that it's also quite dangerous. Nobody wants to be
hit in the head with a thrown rock. A well
aimed thrown rock can of course be deadly true, and
(25:45):
on top of that, a volley of thrown rocks from
multiple assailants even more dangerous. And of course we see
this reflected in the use of stoning as a form
of execution from ancient times through modern times. But I
didn't want to dwell so much on that because that's
more depressing subject matter. But I wanted to focus more
on hand thrown stones and weapons in a hunting and
(26:06):
warfare context. Okay, So I think for many of us,
and this was me until just the other day, we
tend to think of ranged weapons as this steady ascent
out of the Stone Age. So sure we threw stones
at things then, and we greatly increased our ability to
strategically employ those thrown stones, But then we got why,
(26:26):
and then of coach, we probably got wiser about how
we selected stones, granted, But then eventually we're gonna level up, right,
You're gonna upgrade to using something like a sling, a spear,
a spear thrower, a bow and arrow across bow, et cetera,
all the way up through the modern era. And I
think it's easy to think of this as a linear progression,
or like a video game skill tree, a situation where
(26:49):
you could you're yelling at the screen, Hey, don't equip
the throwing rock, you fool. You have a spear, Now
equip the spear.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yes, yes, video game logic pervades our thoughts in every way.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, but of course this is not exactly how things
pan out for a number of reasons. Speaking broadly in
terms of just weaponry in general, materials are one factor,
and we've discussed that on the show before, but another
huge factor to consider is that humans are such great
natural throwers, as we've been discussing, and it's such a
big part of the weapon history, that there just may
(27:22):
not be a good reason to completely abandon the hand
thrown stone, right.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
I mean, you can imagine cases where people are having
great success with just hand thrown stones, and why fix
what's not broken?
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Yeah, And then if something also becomes a part of culture,
becomes a part of a martial art and a weapon tradition,
then there's this added incentive to keep it around. So
I started looking into some examples from Polynesian weaponry and
martial arts. The first thing I ran across was an
interesting mention in the Coming of the Mallori Weapons, a
(27:59):
nineteen forty nine text by New Zealand anthropologists and doctor
Tae Rangi Heroa who lived eighteen seventy seven through nineteen
fifty one, in discussing the prevalence for spears and clubs
in Polynesian history. He also discusses the swing as a
primary range weapon along with the spear, and then he
shares the following quote. Stones were also thrown by hand,
(28:21):
and early European voyagers have reported this form of attack
more than the use of the sling. The bow and arrow,
while present in some groups, was used for sport but
not as a weapon of war. In Samoa it was
used to shoot pigeons, in Hawaii to shoot rats, and
in the Society Islands it was a chiefly sport in
which archers clad in special costume shot for distance from
(28:43):
raised stone platforms. Now, obviously this is an older source here,
but instantly reading this he realized, well, this is true.
It raises interesting possibilities about the dependability of thrown stones
as weaponry even as other technologies come online.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Right, so you could have the technology of a bow
but still prefer hand thrown stones for some utilities.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, and the advantages of the bow, of course, are
well documented. You know, none of this that we're getting
into is going to be a statement that along the
lines of well, actually a throne rock is better than
a high power bow or anything like that. But it
is true that the use of the bow was widespread,
not only in ancient armies, but among hunter gatherers. But
(29:27):
as Thomas Hoolett points out in a section on ranged
weaponry in the book Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World,
not all hunter gatherers use the bow and arrow. He
mentions Australian Aborigines as an example of a people who
did not, despite some of them surely being aware of
the technology via contact with the Tarres Strait Islanders who
(29:48):
used bows. They were still people that retain the use
of ranged weaponry that depended on hand thrown objects, and
will come back to the most famous classification of hand
thrown objects that they used in a bit. But where
I really got fascinated with all of this was a
paper from twenty eleven. This was published in the Journal
(30:11):
of the Polynesian Society by Barbara Isaac and Grenaria Isaac
titled Unexpected Trajectories, a History of New Wayan Throwing Stones.
The authors here describe the warstones of New Way. New
Way is an island that's fifteen hundred miles or twenty
four hundred kilometers northeast of New Zealand, and when Captain
(30:35):
James Cook visited the island in seventeen seventy four. He
dubbed it the Savage Island, which may have had something
to do with their consumption of the native banana species,
which to understand had like a red peal and an
orangeish interior, and if in the teeth or rubbed on
the body, might look like blood. This also clearly reflects
(30:56):
Cook's general attitude towards indigenous peoples as well. But he
also certainly seemed to have encountered some difficulty in landing
on New Way. It's apparently difficult to land on the
island anyway due to the surrounding coral reefs, but the
people of New Way were also hostile to his landing
attempts and his naturalists. The naturalist on this particular voyage,
(31:18):
Andrews Sparman, was injured by a thrown stone. I believe
it got him in the arm. The New Way here
they were not just picking up random stones and throwing
them either. This is where it gets really fascinating. They
had a highly refined approach to the use of hand
thrown ranged stone weaponry. According to Isaac and Isaac, the
(31:41):
warriors were reported at the time to each have spears
on their person, to have a swing and also have
a pouch of stones for throwing. But throwing stones and
sling launch stones were not uncommon among other people who
were encountered on islands from this vast region, so comparatively,
there wasn't much Western commentary on these throwing stones. But
(32:03):
the throwing stones of New Way, according to Isaac and Isaac,
were quite singular, and much of it would come out
later through indigenous recollections, the work of later anthropologists and missionaries,
as well as later analysis of stones that were subsequently
taken off the island after Western contact.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
So these war.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Stones, the crazy thing about them is that, again these
are not just stones that were picked up or even
stones that were sort of painstakingly collected and the way
that one might scour the rocks by a stream to
find the best rocks for skipping. Now, these were crafted items,
(32:53):
made of I think predominantly limestone crafted items.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
So you might think of this as more like an
arrow or an axe head or something, but it is
a stone for throwing with the hand right right.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
The people here would harvest the stone, apparently from stalactites
and stalagmites in naturally occurring caves on the island and
then wear them down into the desired shape by working
them over with other pieces of stone or with pieces
of coral. So we're talking considerable manufacturing effort going into these. Again,
(33:28):
they're not just picked up off the ground. They're not
even scavenge from the ground. They are manufactured from materials
that are harvested. They tended to weigh around three to
four pounds each and they were largely spherical in shape.
They were often compared to small cannon balls by Western commentators,
but the difference is that they were elongated a little
(33:51):
bit on the two opposing ends. You can look up
pictures of these online and to me, if I was
to compare them to a naturally occurring object, I would
say they kind of look like like well crafted stone,
lemons or limes.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I was gonna say, lemon, yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Yeah, so yeah they have that. Or I guess you
could almost say they don't really look like a football,
but they have I guess, a slightly football esque shape,
or they remind me of certain like malformed or not malformed,
but sort of slightly unrealistic toy footballs you might have
seen if you were a child, you know, back in
(34:29):
the eighties or something.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Sorry, I was just briefly amused by the concept of
a toy football.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Well, well, you have the functional football. It's for serious business,
for the sport of American football. And then you have
something that's that's less serious.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
This is a football, this is not for playing with.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
So you did have Western observers, though, that were figuring
a lot of this out, that these warstones were indeed
crafted items, that they were made out of limestone, that
people would harvest the stone from against stalactites and stalagmites,
And there's some really interesting takes on this that are
reported in this paper. In eighteen sixty eight, Missionary Thomas
(35:11):
Powell wrote that quote this fact is remarkable as an
indication of thought and design natural to this people. For
it is not probable that the first inhabitants brought the
ideas with them. But they found this limestone in the caves,
saw the use to which it might be put, and
designed the shape. It is therefore original on their part,
(35:32):
and in this particular they anticipated the European science of
the recent century. Now they don't note what he was
referring to here on the European science thing. I'm thinking
maybe airships. I'm not sure. They kind of have an
airship look to him, I guess. Now. On the limestone front,
nineteenth and twentieth century anthropologists described other warstones that were
(35:54):
sometimes used that might have been made of other materials
of basalt of coral, for example. You definitely have examples.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Of like a black.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Stone of black war stone, but limestone seems to be
the primary material. They were highly prized and were used
exclusively for conflict, and there was apparently a lot of
conflict on the on the island. You know, this is
before there were any Westerners even, and part of it
had to do with you know, droughts would occur and
there was a lot of skirmishing for available resources. But
(36:29):
they didn't hunt with them apparently, So birds were hunted
with what are referred to as bird bows in this paper,
and fish were hunted with nets. So these were exclusively
for dealing with human threats or perceived human threats. Warriors
would carry them in bags or on belts, and if
they ran out of ammo, it's mentioned that they would
(36:50):
naturally make use of stones from the ground as well,
so they weren't above you know, reaching down and grabbing
whatever was available and throwing that after your special stones
were extinguished, and then of course after a skirmish or battle,
you would hopefully be able to go back and pick
up your AMMO retrieve them. Because other sources mentioned that
(37:11):
they often they had names, they had histories, histories of violence,
and so these particular stones would kind of resonate with
importance to the individual who wielded it.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
So it's interesting that if the stones are you know,
they're they're manufactured with care, and they're used specifically for
human conflict instead of hunting. I mean, it makes me
think about them them having i don't know, some kind
of special like communicative or signaling power in addition to
their ability to hit and hurt someone.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Here's another great quote. This
one is if it's in the paper as well, from
anthropologists Edwin Loewe, who wrote the following about the importance
of the stones. The individuals quote the fighting stones all
had special names, and they were put in a kafa
or girdle, which was plated like a matt. The kafa
(38:07):
was about six to seven inches wide and was customarily
four fathoms in length. The third night before the war arrived,
they wound the kafa around their stomachs and slept in
this manner during the night, neither eating or drinking. So
in this paper, the authors here they point out that
(38:29):
these new weeg In stones, these war stones, there were
songs about them, and part of their importance also may
have had to do with the fact that they were
products of the caves, which were sacred sites with seems
like connections to the afterlife, And of course this matches
up with the way caves were viewed by peoples and
(38:49):
other parts of the world as well. The stones were
used in ambush attacks, in skirmishes, but also sometimes in
fights to the death would occur, but it seems like
a lot of these battles, based on some of the commentaries,
may not have been typically that lethal. So yeah, this
does line up with this idea of communication. It's not
(39:12):
necessarily about going out and absolutely murdering the competition, but
driving them away from resources that you're looking to control.
And in the paper, the authors also mostly speculate on
accuracy here, and part of this was based on accounts
of other throwing techniques by other advanced stone or club
(39:33):
throwing groups, but they speculate that high accuracy was likely
within twenty yards or eighteen meters roughly, but greater distance
accuracy was certainly possible. And I think this makes sense
when you consider the likely scenarios in which these stones
are being used. So yeah, any kind of sort of
tabletop gaming scenario that you have in your mind should
(39:57):
probably set aside. It sounds like most of these the
the encounters these battles would have involved like one individual
against one another individual or one small group against another.
It seems like skirmishes and small ambushes were sort of
the typical encounter context for their usage. So anyway, it's
a fascinating paper. It's available on jay Store if anyone
(40:20):
wants to read more. They really get in depth about
the history of it and various mostly Western commentators who
are looking at it, and also how the use of
the stones was disappeared and then the stones went out
throughout the world and then were to certain degrees brought
back or studied. Now, this was certainly the most to
(40:41):
me anyway remarkable account of stone throwing I came across,
but not the only account of specialized throwing stones. I
ran across the work of Guy Steibel talking about archaeology
finds in Jerusalem and the accumulated weapons and AMMO that
they were finding. This was a paper that came out
(41:02):
on twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
This is from a.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Chapter titled Military Equipment in a larger collection of papers
titled Jerusalem Excavations in the Tiropean Valley. And yeah, there's
a lot of discussion of things like the things you
would expect to find, sling stones and so forth, other
types of projectiles. But then there's an interesting part where
(41:27):
he mentions he starts talking about what may have been
stones that were expressly collected and even crafted for throwing.
Quote three flint balls have a single flat face, unlike
weights or grinding stones that frequently exhibit multiple flat surfaces.
They were ideal for heaping on top of battlements, as
(41:49):
modern experiments have demonstrated. In light of parallels from both
Palestine and the Roman West, it appears that the use
of hand thrown stones was much more prevalent than had
been previously appreciated in modern scholarship.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Oh, that's interesting. The single flat face. So that would
be a stone that was modified or selected to have
a single flat face in order to make it easier
to stack in a pile, and so it wouldn't roll away.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah, yeah, for use on battlements, which I guess also
the other side of that is, not only do you
not want your AMMO to roll away, you don't want
it to roll off the battlements with you know, fatal
gravity of sense potentially if you're not meaning to drop it. Yeah,
I've never thought about this before. I mean, I've certainly
(42:39):
researched siege scenarios before, where it's very obvious that if
you have the advantage of battlements, there's a great deal
you can do without the need for the power of
a bow. You can just drop things on people underneath.
And it was dropping things on your besiegers was a
favorite tactic. Be that you could drop rock, you could
(43:00):
drop various burning things, oils, et cetera, all manner of things,
and again with lethal intensity. But this idea of not
just having stones, but stones that had been to some
degree altered or manufactured or crafted in order to just
stack up there so they're ready to go, but they're
also not rolling out of sight and posing a danger
(43:22):
to anyone who might just say, be working beneath. Now,
there are also several interesting cases, probably many many more
on top of what I'm going to highlight here of
hand thrown clubs and throwing sticks. So you know, we've
(43:45):
been talking about throwing rocks, but of course throwing sticks
is just sort of the other side of the equation here,
and you find example of these traditions just throughout the
world on various continents. The throwing stick was used as
a hunting tool by prehistoric peoples, and we have examples
of these going back at least some three hundred thousand years.
(44:05):
One of the problems that this is something that's pointed
out in a paper I was looking at by Conrad
at All in nature, ecology and evolution, is that a
throwing stick is generally a wooden stick, and therefore it's
not always going to survive to become an artifact that
can be studied and interpreted, you know, hundreds of thousands
of years later. But the practice of hunting with thrown
(44:29):
sticks certainly survived. The ancient Egyptians retained a practice of
hunting with throwing sticks, and we see this commemorated both
in their hieroglyphics but also in art. I included an
image for you to look at here, Joe, where you
see an individual clearly out by the water side. There
are all these birds around and in one hand the
(44:52):
individual was holding up this throwing stick.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
And this is sort of an an induated club of
sorts that can be thrown.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah. Yeah, and I mean we also see the use
of this in other cultures as well. The hope He
tribes people of North America also used a type of
hunting sticks, sometimes referred to as a rabbit stick name
for the prey. You would go after this with this tool,
with this weapon. Throwing clubs throwing sticks were also used
in warfare scenarios and also in war related ceremonies and symbolism.
(45:27):
Fiji Islanders used beautiful and ceremonial throwing war clubs. These
were called ulahs, and you can look up examples of these.
Some key African traditions of throwing clubs are notable as well,
including the East African rungu as well as the knob
carry of southern and Eastern Africa. And these were used
(45:47):
for hunting in war, but also became highly symbolic social
signifiers as well. Yeah, but I feel like the idea
that the thrown blunt weapon the throwing club is something
that is often I guess glossed over in at least
in the Western mindset, you know, just again coming back
as always to things like Dungeons and Dragons, where we
(46:10):
wrap all these fantasy scenarios around the use of ranged
in melee weaponry. It's easy to dismiss the idea that, yeah,
that the club also is a potential range weapon, though
of course, I think Dungeons and Dragons does at least
have a boomerang in it, And the boomerang is probably
the most famous, and I guess the most exceptional of
(46:33):
the throne clubs that humans have developed over the ages.
The boomerang is exceptional because it's still essentially a throne
club that kills or injures via blunt force, but it
is also crafted to spin in just the right way
and by virtue of its shape, to generate an aerofoil,
(46:54):
which then increases the distance that it can be thrown.
So it's not only you know, throne but it also
begins to take on flight in a fascinating manner.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah. I remember being fascinated by the boomerang as far
back as when I was a little kid.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
Yeah, And according to Thomas Hewlett, we run into the
wooden artifact problem again with boomerangs, but convincing boomerangs have
been discovered as old as ten thousand years, so they've
been around for quite a while. There are returning boomerangs
and their non returning boomerangs. Non returning boomerangs were primarily weapons,
(47:33):
while returning boomerangs were I think more in the recreational
and symbolic and mythological sphere of things, but could also
be used apparently in hunting scenarios as some sort of
decoy for I think, birds of prey, but also as
a means of frightening and tended bird prey, So they
weren't without functional uses. And there are a lot of
(47:55):
things similar to these boomerangs that we find in other
cultures as well, like the Tamil people had a kind
of non returning boomerang of their own called a valari,
and you can look up various images of this as well.
Has a slight boomerang shape, kind of a tusk like shape.
Now going back to Thomas Coulett here, he points out
(48:16):
that broadly speaking, the evolution of range weaponry was initially
an evolution that had a lot to do with range.
Thrown weapons greatly increase the range at which human beings
may inflict harm. But then additional throwing technologies extend that range,
and this of course increases what we can do with
them from a hunting standpoint, but also provides advantages over
(48:38):
other human adversaries, at least under the right conditions. But
I think these examples show that it's not just a
matter of abandoning the use of hand thrown projectiles. We
retain the physical abilities as well as the basic skill sets,
and we see this reflected in our sports as well
as our weapon cultures. Hand thrown weapon traditions clearly survived
the advent of other range weapon technologies and in many
(49:01):
cases retained important cultural values as well. And there's one
final wrinkle here too that I almost completely blanked on.
I almost didn't have anything about this in the notes,
but then I of course remembered well. As we enter
into the age of explosives, hand thrown weaponry remains important
in the form of hand grenades. The more common variety
(49:22):
of grenade is of course made to be thrown by hand,
much like a throwing stone, more or less fits in
the human palm, though we also have the example of
the German stick hand grenade that was used in the
first and Second World Wars, and I think adopted by
some other groups as well during this period. But as
the name implies, this design features a long handle, and
(49:42):
these were thrown end over end, much like a hunting
stick or a thrown club. Now, in both cases, obviously,
given that this is an item that will explode, you
don't necessarily have to be as precise. It's not a
situation where you have to hit somebody in the head
with it or in the neck with it every time
for the weapon to be successful. Though I guess there
would be situations where you were trying to throw said
(50:03):
grenade into say a window or some sort of an
opening and a tank, etc.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Well, or like in other cases we've looked at to
compel behavior to drive people away from a particular location.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Yeah, I was thinking about Monty Python many months back,
and I of course thought of the Holy Hand Grenade
of Antioch, the magical weapon that is used against the
Killer Rabbit. And I remember looking around a little bit
just to see was there anything in use during the
general historic range that we're talking about here that would
(50:38):
have been like a grenade, And as I recall, there wasn't, really,
so I guess there is maybe a potential lag. There's
this kind of gap between the high age of stone
throwing and stick throwing as a viable weapon, and then
the emergence of explosives, which kind of reignites the need
(51:00):
to be able to throw precisely or at least with
some degree of precision. You don't want to throw a
hand grenade imprecisely, but we certainly see with hand grenades
that like the need for individuals to throw these things
becomes all the more important. I mean, you look at
images of say, modern soldiers training to throw hand grenades,
(51:22):
and there's a definite form to how you do it,
you know, like there's definite training in place, so precise
throwing of handheld objects remains a seemingly important part of
the modern military scenario.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
You know, I didn't plan it like this, but it's
interesting how this series began as us wanting to look
at examples of non human animals throwing, and ultimately the
main thing that I'm taking away from it is the
special role of throwing in the development of human culture,
in human cognition.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Yeah, yeah, I surprised by it as well, because, yeah,
we started off with the octopus and now here we
are talking about soldiers with grenades. We have to keep
the grenades away from the octopuses. By the way, Yes,
I should also point out I didn't even get into
the use of sharpened throwing weapons, but obviously that's a
(52:19):
huge part of weapon culture throughout history as well. I
don't know. I guess it felt like one step manufacturing
or materially away from just throwing a stick or throwing
a rock, So I didn't get into that, But obviously
there's a lot one could additionally discuss involving hand thrown axes,
hand thrown darts and knives and so forth. So I
(52:40):
guess different aerodynamic properties come into play with at least
some of those weapon designs. All right, we're gonna go
ahead and end it there, but we'd love to hear
from everyone out there if you have thoughts, feedback, experience
on anything we've discussed here in this episode or the
previous episodes regarding animals throwing things, humans throwing things, the
(53:05):
role that being able to throw something may have in
the development of language, and also just the various weapons
cultures martial arts that have involved hand thrown objects. If
you have anything to add about any of that, please
write in we would love to hear from you. Just
a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a
science podcast with core episodes publishing on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
(53:28):
On Mondays we do a listener mail and that's where
you can write in and we'll discuss some of the
mail that comes in. On Wednesdays we do a short
form artifact or monster fact episode, and then on Fridays
we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
a strange film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for
the future, to share something interesting, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
Listening to your favorite shows.
Speaker 3 (54:35):
H
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I am Joe McCormick, and Rob and I are
out this week, so we're bringing you an episode from
the vault. This is sort of part four in our
series that we started reairing last week about throwing behaviors
in non human animals. But here we're getting, of course,
to the emergence of throwing behaviors in humans and human ancestors.
I hope you enjoy and oh this one originally published
(00:30):
January twelfth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part four
of our series on throwing behavior. Now, in previous parts
we focused mainly on non human animals. We've looked at
alleged throwing behaviors in octopuses, in elephants, in the mongoose.
We definitely had a digression about dogs with air Bud
(01:10):
in the previous episode. But also in the previous episode
we ended up talking about the evolution of the human
capacity for throwing, which we are particularly apt at Humans
are very good at throwing, especially compared to our nearest
primate relatives. So like a chimpanzee maybe on average three
(01:30):
or four times stronger than a human, But a human,
even without specialized training, can generally throw a lot more
forcefully and a lot better than a chimpanzee can. So
why are we so specialized for throwing? Well, we took
a look at some evolutionary hypotheses about where our capacity
for throwing comes from. But there was another thing that
I came across while researching this subject that I did
(01:53):
not get into in the previous episode, and I wanted
to come back to it here because I found it
really interesting. And this is the idea of what if
the evolution of throwing was somehow a necessary precursor for
the evolution of probably the most distinctly human trait language,
(02:13):
So not just that humans are good at throwing and
good at language, but that there is actually a neurobiological
link between the two one comes from the other. So
to look at this question, I wanted to refer to
a paper by William D. Hopkins, Jamie L. Russell, and
Jennifer A. Schaeffer published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
(02:36):
Society b Biological Sciences, published in twenty twelve, called the
Neural and Cognitive Correlates of Aimed Throwing in Chimpanzees a magnetic, resonance, image,
and behavioral study on a unique form of social tool use.
So to begin, they cover some of the same ground
we did in the previous episode. You know how unusual
(02:59):
he when throwing behavior is in a way, and despite
all the interesting examples we've discussed in these episodes of
animals throwing things for various reasons, whether trained by humans
or just doing it as part of their natural instinctual behaviors,
the authors here argue that in general, throwing remains unsystematic,
in their words, in other animals, And I think this
is fair. No other animal practices the kind of generalized,
(03:24):
skillful habitual throwing that we do, certainly not without training
by humans.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, as we discussed in the previous episode, it goes
way back in human behavior, and it's something that even today,
with all our other tools and ways of doing things
at a distance, we still engage in throwing. I think
in the very first episode we discussed that sort of
at least in my case, this strange pull to need
(03:51):
to throw a ball with my son when he was younger,
even though we're not a baseball or softball family. But
it was just kind of the thing that I guess
was like nostalgic in the culture, but also very satisfying
to do and something that even if you're not very
practiced at you can do with some or at least
I found that I could do with some degree of precision,
(04:12):
despite being very rusty at the whole softball baseball thing.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I totally sympathize with you there. I mean, I think
neither of us are really sports guys. I don't really
want rules, I don't really want teams, but I do
want ball or frisbee. Frisbee just as good in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, And I mean there's also there's a lot more
throwing that goes on too, Like how often do we
find ourselves across the room from someone We request something
and they give it a tok, they throw it to us,
and you want to be able to catch it for
various reasons. And then that's without even getting into the
various sports that even if we don't engage in, we
may watch and the throwing of balls is often an
(04:51):
essential part, or at least one aspect of a given
sport right.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
But of course, apart from these recreational concerns, you know,
throwing has been crucial to the survival of our ancestors.
That seems pretty clear. And in the last episode we
talked about arguments from evolutionary anthropology that throwing was positively
selected for in human ancestors, and the bodies of hominin
species like Homo erectus show anatomical changes that seem to
(05:18):
favor forceful overhand throwing. I remember those changes. They're changes
in the shoulder and the waist and the upper arm,
all of which combined to allow for a more substantial
wind up, sort of a pulling back of tension of
the biomechanical bowstring to be released rapidly during the throw.
(05:38):
And we also talked about the argument that these changes
appear to coincide with evidence of meat becoming a bigger
part of the diet of these hominins, showing that throwing
was likely useful for obtaining food, either through power scavenging
like driving predators away from a kill in order to
take the meat for yourself, or direct hunting, and either
(05:59):
way increasing the availability of food energy. Now, one very
interesting thing about the adaptation for throwing is that it
implies not only changes in the muscles and the skeletal system.
Of course, you know, you can see all those changes
around the scapula and the shoulder blade, changes in the waist,
the arm, and so forth, But it also implies changes
(06:20):
in cognition. An animal that can throw objects sourced from
the environment is showing a specialized way of thinking, and
not just a specialized way of moving. Now what do
I mean by this? Well, as one example, the authors
reference a specific captive chimpanzee who came up in the
last episode. Robie, remember the story of Santino, the chimpanzee
(06:43):
who was in a zoo and I believe Sweden was it?
Speaker 1 (06:46):
I believe?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
So, yes, Ip Santino, Yeah, poor Santino. The authors right
that Santino, who I guess was alive at the time
this paper was written. Quote hydes rocks out of sight
of the care staff, waiting to reveal and throw them
at approaching visitors at the most opportune time. Evidence of
planning comes from the observation that Santino searches for the
(07:08):
rocks from a moat inside the enclosure prior to the
arrival of the care staff and the visitors, and cashes
the rocks out of sight, only to pull them out
when the visitors arrive. That is a crafty chimp, and
that is forethought. Adding to this, the authors throw in
their own observations of similar pre planning behavior in chimpanzees
(07:32):
in two other research environments, and they argue that the
throwing quote, though often agonistic in function and consequence, agonistic
meaningless confrontational aggressive behavior, is not part of the ape's
display behavior. Indeed, most instances of aimed throwing that we
have observed occur without any accompanying display behavior such as
(07:53):
pilo erection, hooting, and charging, further suggesting an element of
planning on the part of the individual ape. So I
think that's interesting too if you understand what they're saying there,
that there is a sort of standard display behavior algorithm,
like when an ape is doing an agonistic display when
trying to be dominant and aggressive and maybe scare you off.
(08:17):
It includes all of these sub features like the pilo
erection meaning the bristling of body hair, hair stands on end, hooting,
charging back and forth, all that stuff. And they say
that when the apes throw stuff at people, they do
it without all of these other features of a typical
instinctual display. Another way that throwing is different from most
other forms of tool use and apes. The most commonly
(08:40):
observed types of tool use by wild chimpanzees are all
things where the tool is used to extract otherwise unreachable food,
often like from a hole or enclosure of some kind,
and then is eaten immediately. So examples here would be
cracking of nuts with stones like nut cracking is an
example of ape tool use, but also termite fishing with sticks,
(09:02):
ant dipping, and so forth. All of these give rise
to an immediate food reward for executing the behavior, meaning
that these behaviors are subject to regular operant conditioning rules.
You know, if a behavior leads to an immediate food reward,
an animal can learn to repeat basically any arbitrary set
(09:23):
of actions. So you know, chimpanzee gets delicious termites every
time it. Of course, if it dips for them, that's
one thing. But maybe if it stands on one foot
and gets termites every time, it may learn to stand
on one foot to get the meat.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah, and we see this reflected and so many experiments
involving animals over the years. You know, can you get
an animal to manipulate some sort of technological gadget in
order to get a food reward.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, pressing a button or something that would have no
relevance in the natural environment. So other tool use behaviors
could easily be learned and reinforced through this kind of conditioning.
But throwing, as practiced by apes does not lead to
an immediate food reward. In fact, it rarely, if ever,
leads to a food reward at all the author's right quote.
(10:12):
What appears to be the main reward for throwing is
the simple ability to control or manipulate the behavior of
the targeted individual ape or human, which, though you could
consider it a goal, I mean that is much more
complicated and ambiguous than a direct food reward.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, because it's not like the ape in this scenario
is throwing the rock, hitting the human, and then by
hitting the human they drop an apple, right.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah. Now, from here, the authors go on to discuss
the underappreciated complexity of throwing. We also talked about this
at length in the previous episode. But you know, suffice
to say, force full, precise overhand throwing is an extremely
demanding task, not only for the muscles but for the brain,
requiring split second coordination of perceptual judgments all kinds of things.
(11:04):
You know, how far away is the target, is it
moving in what direction? And how fast? What are the
physical properties of the projectile and so forth. But then
the other thing is the sequential motor control. To throw
an object, you have to precisely time a rapid sequence
of muscular movements, and other authors have previously suggested that
(11:28):
quote the increased selection for neural synchrony of rapid muscular sequencing.
Routines associated with actions such as throwing are similar to
the motor programming demands of language and speech, and therefore
engage similar neural systems, notably Broca's area. In other words,
(11:50):
there are similarities between what the brain is doing and
what parts of the brain are being used to coordinate
a throw and to process language and speech. And one
idea that gets wrapped up in this is the role
of brain lateralization, segmenting of brain processes to one hemisphere
(12:10):
or side of the brain or the other. So in
cultures where throwing behavior has been studied, the authors say
the majority of people pretty much always prefer to throw
with the right hand. Studies in chimpanzees also show a
bias toward right handedness for throwing, and these right hand
preferences suggest left hemisphere dominance in the brain in these
(12:31):
majorities of both populations, because when it comes to controlling
the body's movements, of course, you know, the hemispheres are flipped. Generally,
the left hemisphere links to the right hand, the right
hemisphere to the left, and so forth. Some researchers have
pointed this out in the context of the fact that
the left hemisphere also contains the brain regions, notably Broca's area,
(12:54):
that dominate the production of speech. Broker's area is also
known as the motor speech area, and one researcher who
has focused on this is the American neurophysiologist William H. Calvin,
who was actually, I think maybe still is a professor
at the University of Washington at Seattle, who observing that
(13:14):
eighty nine percent of people prefer to throw with the
right arm, Calvin hypothesized that the left hemispher's capacity for
language may have actually evolved from a pre existing adaptation
for right handed throwing. He apparently published a book that
contained this hypothesis. In nineteen eighty three, it was called
(13:35):
The Throwing Madonna.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Oh didn't they adapted this into the film a lead
of their own right?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Was Madonna in that?
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I believe?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Oh, okay? Was she the picture in the movie?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Ah? Oh, I don't remember, but I mean surely she
threw a ball at least once. I mean there's a
lot of throwing in baseball.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, you throw, no matter what position you are. I
guess the picture throws the most.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
There's no crying in baseball, but there was throwing in baseball.
There's a lot that much. I remember for the film.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Okay, so Madonna was definitely throwing, no matter what position
she played. No, but it unfortunately did not become the
basis of the movie as far as I know. Instead,
it was a place where Calvin laid out an interesting
sort of story, a possible series of developments that could
have led to the development of language via the stepping
(14:25):
stone of capacity for throwing. So the story goes like this,
lateralization evolved for one handed throwing with the right hand,
specifically so that parents, typically mothers, could cradle an infant
on their left side and then they'd be free to
throw with the right hand if they needed to. So,
(14:49):
I mean, obviously things like this are hard to prove
for sure, but that is an interesting idea because I
started thinking about how I recently became a father, and
without thinking about it at all, I pretty much always
when I hold my baby, hold her on the left
side of my torso, and so if she like falls
asleep against me, her head is going to be on
(15:11):
the left side of my chest and from my point
of view, which is also the side where the heartbeat
is closer. I never planned it that way, that that
just sort of happened, and I was talking to my
wife and she said, yeah, most often she's on the
left side there too, So I don't know that that's
kind of interesting. I mean, it could be totally unrelated,
(15:32):
but I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would always scoop up on the
left side as well. My son is now I think
finally too big for me to do that without seriously
injuring myself.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
But yes, and I guess at a certain point you
become less desiring of the heartbeat sound that like maybe
loses some of the power it has over really young infants.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, I don't know. I guess it varies from child
to child, depends on how big they get and at
what point they want that distance.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Okay, well, so it's hard to know for sure if
the need to scoop a child and hold them on
the left side of the body, close to the heartbeat
is the real reason driving brain lateralization. I find it
more compelling than some other hypotheses that seemed to be
on offer at the time, one that cited I was
reading a review of this book by Calvin that cited
(16:30):
a previous hypothesis that the right handedness evolved because men
in battle I guess prehistoric battle needed to hold a
shield above their above their heart on the left side.
I was like, I get out of here.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
This discussion reminds me of a painting, an eighteen eighty
eight painting that I hadn't thought of in a bit,
I believe what if The title of this piece is
Two Mothers by Leon Maxim of Favre. I'm pronouncing that correctly.
It's f A I v R. But it's a pretty
stunning piece in which we see this vision of a
(17:10):
of a prehistoric mother with very modern touches to it.
But she's standing here in some sort of a you know,
a hide garment, and she has this heavy looking infant
in her left arm, and then there's another child sort
of hanging on to her left arm. In her right hand,
she has uh like some sort of a stone weapon,
(17:33):
like a wooden half with a with a stone blade,
some sort of like you know, primitive acts or club.
And she's staring back into the shadows behind her with
there's this kind of like cave environment, and there's clearly
an animal lurking there or an animal emerging from the shadows.
And I think this is supposed to be the other mother,
(17:54):
the mother that is hunting her. And I have no
idea of this. This this piece has has any connection
what we're talking about here, But it is interesting that
we do see left arm cradling children, right arm brandishing
a weapon to protect those children against some threat.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
It is a kind of beautiful painting. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, her hair is perfect too, like this mom's really
got it together, perfect hair, protecting the children, ready to
brain a panther with some sort of a stone weapon.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Anyway, whatever the cause of the right hand lateralization for
sequential motor control in throwing, The hypothesis goes on from
here to suggest that sequential motor control regions that made
us so good at tossing a stone with one hand
were eventually commondeered by selection pressure for communication and shifted
(18:47):
to a different kind of sequential motor control, which was
language production. Now, when we think of language production, we
think of speech, and that could be the case. I
think Calvin argued for a transitional state where the original
language was more gesture based, like gesturing with the hands maybe,
which would have then transitioned into speech production with the mouth. Again,
(19:10):
like many things here, that's not something we know for sure,
so we're in very speculative territory. But I do find
this really interesting. So again, if there's anything to this story,
it would go that for some reason, there is an
original right hand left brain motor lateralization for the majority
of the population for throwing objects. Human ancestors get really
good at throwing with that one hand, maybe cradling a
(19:32):
baby in the other arm or doing something else. And
then you could argue that the lateralization for precise sequential
motor activity and the left brain to power throwing eventually
provides the neurological scaffolding for the left brain's capacity for
language and speech. Now, what was the actual experiment in
(19:53):
this study, Well, it was looking at our closest primate
relatives to see if they could provide any insight on
what might have been going on in the brains of
very distant human ancestors. So they were looking at chimpanzees. Now, again,
chimpanzees don't throw nearly as well or as often as
we do, but some throw sometimes, So what if anything
(20:15):
is different in the brains of chimpanzees that reliably throw
versus those that don't. Specifically, the authors looked at the
ratio of two different types of brain tissue, white matter
and gray matter in the areas of chimpanzee brains that
would be most similar to the areas of the human
brain involved in motor control for throwing and for speech.
(20:38):
And this would be quote the homologue to Broca's area.
I remember again Broker's areas involved in speech production in humans.
And then they also say as well as the motor
hand area of the precentral gyrus termed the knob, K
and OB. And what they found was that in both
of these areas, in the chimpanzee equivalent of Broker's area
(20:58):
and in the knob. The ratio of white matter to
gray matter was higher in chimpanzees that throw versus those
that don't. Also quote, we further found that asymmetries in
white matter within both brain regions were larger in the
hemisphere contralateral to the chimpanzee's preferred throwing hand. So what
(21:20):
they're saying is it's not just that the ratio of
white matter was higher in these regions on both sides
of the brain. It's that whichever hand the chimpanzee liked
to throw with those particular regions had a higher proportion
of white matter on the opposite side of the brain. Also,
they assessed the chimpanzees in this study with what is
(21:41):
called a Primate Cognition Test BATTERY or pct B, which is,
you know, a sort of an SAT for chimpanzees, standard
tests on all kinds of mental abilities, you know, tons
of things, spatial memory, causality, inference, tool property, recognition, gaze following,
and so forth. And they were looking at, well, are
(22:03):
there any differences between apes that throw and apes that
don't throw? And out of this entire test battery generally
not generally, there were no cognitive differences except in one area.
There was only one aptitude where there was a significant difference,
and it was that researchers found chimpanzees that were more
(22:23):
inclined to throw were also better at social communication. So
the author's right quote. These results suggest that chimpanzees that
have learned to throw have developed greater cortical connectivity that's
correlating with the white matter between the primary motor cortex
and the Broca's area. Homologue, it is suggested that during
(22:45):
hominine evolution, after the split between lines leading to chimpanzees
and humans, there was intense selection on increased motor skills
associated with throwing, and that this potentially formed the foundation
for left hemisphere specialization associated with language and speech found
in modern humans. So this is another case where I
(23:06):
think this is far from proven. We would need much
more robust evidence before you could endorse this specific evolutionary
story as likely. But I find this very intriguing and
it does seem possible to me that the capacity for
throwing gave rise to the capacity for language.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
So ape throws the bone, the bone spins around the
bone becomes a space station, just as Kubrick promised us.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, I didn't think about that.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yeah, I want to get back into this idea of
early humans, especially throwing stones as weapons and throwing other
things as weapons. You know, as we discussed in the
last episode, we talked about some of the ideas concerning
the development of ranged weapon technology and prehistoric humans. This
idea that what first begins as a way of engaging
(23:54):
in agonistic communication could transform into just a way of
physically sin a message to another species via projectile. But
then eventually that begins to get into this way to
manipulate their behavior at range, especially in the case of
power scavenging, and ultimately it could be used as a
way to hunt prey animals. Right, And as we were
(24:15):
actually recording that episode, my mind kept turning to these
images of some sort of prehistoric warfare scenario in which
some you know, entirely too kubricky prehistoric people were employing
various weapons and kind of probably also probably a slightly
two table top war game manner where you have you know,
units of bone wielding beaters moving forward to engage in
(24:38):
some melee attacks, and then maybe you have some units
of rock throwers behind them, and you know this this
felt kind of silly in my head, maybe even a
little Gary Larson esque in my head, a little farside.
But then I started looking into it more because, of course,
you know, rock throwers were an important part of our history,
(24:58):
and when you start looking at into the history of
not only range weaponry, but hand range weaponry, it gets
pretty fascinating.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Well yeah, I mean, I think one of the main
things that striking is rediscovering how potent to force simple
thrown objects are, even in an era where powered projectile
technology like bows or crossbows or even guns exist.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
When you think of somebody's throwing rocks, there at least
can be this sort of feeling that it's like a
juvenile sort of thing, that it's primitive, that it's a nuisance.
But on the other hand, I think most of us
realize that it's also quite dangerous. Nobody wants to be
hit in the head with a thrown rock. A well
aimed thrown rock can of course be deadly true, and
(25:45):
on top of that, a volley of thrown rocks from
multiple assailants even more dangerous. And of course we see
this reflected in the use of stoning as a form
of execution from ancient times through modern times. But I
didn't want to dwell so much on that because that's
more depressing subject matter. But I wanted to focus more
on hand thrown stones and weapons in a hunting and
(26:06):
warfare context. Okay, So I think for many of us,
and this was me until just the other day, we
tend to think of ranged weapons as this steady ascent
out of the Stone Age. So sure we threw stones
at things then, and we greatly increased our ability to
strategically employ those thrown stones, But then we got why,
(26:26):
and then of coach, we probably got wiser about how
we selected stones, granted, But then eventually we're gonna level up, right,
You're gonna upgrade to using something like a sling, a spear,
a spear thrower, a bow and arrow across bow, et cetera,
all the way up through the modern era. And I
think it's easy to think of this as a linear progression,
or like a video game skill tree, a situation where
(26:49):
you could you're yelling at the screen, Hey, don't equip
the throwing rock, you fool. You have a spear, Now
equip the spear.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yes, yes, video game logic pervades our thoughts in every way.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, but of course this is not exactly how things
pan out for a number of reasons. Speaking broadly in
terms of just weaponry in general, materials are one factor,
and we've discussed that on the show before, but another
huge factor to consider is that humans are such great
natural throwers, as we've been discussing, and it's such a
big part of the weapon history, that there just may
(27:22):
not be a good reason to completely abandon the hand
thrown stone, right.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
I mean, you can imagine cases where people are having
great success with just hand thrown stones, and why fix
what's not broken?
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Yeah, And then if something also becomes a part of culture,
becomes a part of a martial art and a weapon tradition,
then there's this added incentive to keep it around. So
I started looking into some examples from Polynesian weaponry and
martial arts. The first thing I ran across was an
interesting mention in the Coming of the Mallori Weapons, a
(27:59):
nineteen forty nine text by New Zealand anthropologists and doctor
Tae Rangi Heroa who lived eighteen seventy seven through nineteen
fifty one, in discussing the prevalence for spears and clubs
in Polynesian history. He also discusses the swing as a
primary range weapon along with the spear, and then he
shares the following quote. Stones were also thrown by hand,
(28:21):
and early European voyagers have reported this form of attack
more than the use of the sling. The bow and arrow,
while present in some groups, was used for sport but
not as a weapon of war. In Samoa it was
used to shoot pigeons, in Hawaii to shoot rats, and
in the Society Islands it was a chiefly sport in
which archers clad in special costume shot for distance from
(28:43):
raised stone platforms. Now, obviously this is an older source here,
but instantly reading this he realized, well, this is true.
It raises interesting possibilities about the dependability of thrown stones
as weaponry even as other technologies come online.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Right, so you could have the technology of a bow
but still prefer hand thrown stones for some utilities.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, and the advantages of the bow, of course, are
well documented. You know, none of this that we're getting
into is going to be a statement that along the
lines of well, actually a throne rock is better than
a high power bow or anything like that. But it
is true that the use of the bow was widespread,
not only in ancient armies, but among hunter gatherers. But
(29:27):
as Thomas Hoolett points out in a section on ranged
weaponry in the book Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World,
not all hunter gatherers use the bow and arrow. He
mentions Australian Aborigines as an example of a people who
did not, despite some of them surely being aware of
the technology via contact with the Tarres Strait Islanders who
(29:48):
used bows. They were still people that retain the use
of ranged weaponry that depended on hand thrown objects, and
will come back to the most famous classification of hand
thrown objects that they used in a bit. But where
I really got fascinated with all of this was a
paper from twenty eleven. This was published in the Journal
(30:11):
of the Polynesian Society by Barbara Isaac and Grenaria Isaac
titled Unexpected Trajectories, a History of New Wayan Throwing Stones.
The authors here describe the warstones of New Way. New
Way is an island that's fifteen hundred miles or twenty
four hundred kilometers northeast of New Zealand, and when Captain
(30:35):
James Cook visited the island in seventeen seventy four. He
dubbed it the Savage Island, which may have had something
to do with their consumption of the native banana species,
which to understand had like a red peal and an
orangeish interior, and if in the teeth or rubbed on
the body, might look like blood. This also clearly reflects
(30:56):
Cook's general attitude towards indigenous peoples as well. But he
also certainly seemed to have encountered some difficulty in landing
on New Way. It's apparently difficult to land on the
island anyway due to the surrounding coral reefs, but the
people of New Way were also hostile to his landing
attempts and his naturalists. The naturalist on this particular voyage,
(31:18):
Andrews Sparman, was injured by a thrown stone. I believe
it got him in the arm. The New Way here
they were not just picking up random stones and throwing
them either. This is where it gets really fascinating. They
had a highly refined approach to the use of hand
thrown ranged stone weaponry. According to Isaac and Isaac, the
(31:41):
warriors were reported at the time to each have spears
on their person, to have a swing and also have
a pouch of stones for throwing. But throwing stones and
sling launch stones were not uncommon among other people who
were encountered on islands from this vast region, so comparatively,
there wasn't much Western commentary on these throwing stones. But
(32:03):
the throwing stones of New Way, according to Isaac and Isaac,
were quite singular, and much of it would come out
later through indigenous recollections, the work of later anthropologists and missionaries,
as well as later analysis of stones that were subsequently
taken off the island after Western contact.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
So these war.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Stones, the crazy thing about them is that, again these
are not just stones that were picked up or even
stones that were sort of painstakingly collected and the way
that one might scour the rocks by a stream to
find the best rocks for skipping. Now, these were crafted items,
(32:53):
made of I think predominantly limestone crafted items.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
So you might think of this as more like an
arrow or an axe head or something, but it is
a stone for throwing with the hand right right.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
The people here would harvest the stone, apparently from stalactites
and stalagmites in naturally occurring caves on the island and
then wear them down into the desired shape by working
them over with other pieces of stone or with pieces
of coral. So we're talking considerable manufacturing effort going into these. Again,
(33:28):
they're not just picked up off the ground. They're not
even scavenge from the ground. They are manufactured from materials
that are harvested. They tended to weigh around three to
four pounds each and they were largely spherical in shape.
They were often compared to small cannon balls by Western commentators,
but the difference is that they were elongated a little
(33:51):
bit on the two opposing ends. You can look up
pictures of these online and to me, if I was
to compare them to a naturally occurring object, I would
say they kind of look like like well crafted stone,
lemons or limes.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I was gonna say, lemon, yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Yeah, so yeah they have that. Or I guess you
could almost say they don't really look like a football,
but they have I guess, a slightly football esque shape,
or they remind me of certain like malformed or not malformed,
but sort of slightly unrealistic toy footballs you might have
seen if you were a child, you know, back in
(34:29):
the eighties or something.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Sorry, I was just briefly amused by the concept of
a toy football.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Well, well, you have the functional football. It's for serious business,
for the sport of American football. And then you have
something that's that's less serious.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
This is a football, this is not for playing with.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
So you did have Western observers, though, that were figuring
a lot of this out, that these warstones were indeed
crafted items, that they were made out of limestone, that
people would harvest the stone from against stalactites and stalagmites,
And there's some really interesting takes on this that are
reported in this paper. In eighteen sixty eight, Missionary Thomas
(35:11):
Powell wrote that quote this fact is remarkable as an
indication of thought and design natural to this people. For
it is not probable that the first inhabitants brought the
ideas with them. But they found this limestone in the caves,
saw the use to which it might be put, and
designed the shape. It is therefore original on their part,
(35:32):
and in this particular they anticipated the European science of
the recent century. Now they don't note what he was
referring to here on the European science thing. I'm thinking
maybe airships. I'm not sure. They kind of have an
airship look to him, I guess. Now. On the limestone front,
nineteenth and twentieth century anthropologists described other warstones that were
(35:54):
sometimes used that might have been made of other materials
of basalt of coral, for example. You definitely have examples.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Of like a black.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Stone of black war stone, but limestone seems to be
the primary material. They were highly prized and were used
exclusively for conflict, and there was apparently a lot of
conflict on the on the island. You know, this is
before there were any Westerners even, and part of it
had to do with you know, droughts would occur and
there was a lot of skirmishing for available resources. But
(36:29):
they didn't hunt with them apparently, So birds were hunted
with what are referred to as bird bows in this paper,
and fish were hunted with nets. So these were exclusively
for dealing with human threats or perceived human threats. Warriors
would carry them in bags or on belts, and if
they ran out of ammo, it's mentioned that they would
(36:50):
naturally make use of stones from the ground as well,
so they weren't above you know, reaching down and grabbing
whatever was available and throwing that after your special stones
were extinguished, and then of course after a skirmish or battle,
you would hopefully be able to go back and pick
up your AMMO retrieve them. Because other sources mentioned that
(37:11):
they often they had names, they had histories, histories of violence,
and so these particular stones would kind of resonate with
importance to the individual who wielded it.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
So it's interesting that if the stones are you know,
they're they're manufactured with care, and they're used specifically for
human conflict instead of hunting. I mean, it makes me
think about them them having i don't know, some kind
of special like communicative or signaling power in addition to
their ability to hit and hurt someone.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Here's another great quote. This
one is if it's in the paper as well, from
anthropologists Edwin Loewe, who wrote the following about the importance
of the stones. The individuals quote the fighting stones all
had special names, and they were put in a kafa
or girdle, which was plated like a matt. The kafa
(38:07):
was about six to seven inches wide and was customarily
four fathoms in length. The third night before the war arrived,
they wound the kafa around their stomachs and slept in
this manner during the night, neither eating or drinking. So
in this paper, the authors here they point out that
(38:29):
these new weeg In stones, these war stones, there were
songs about them, and part of their importance also may
have had to do with the fact that they were
products of the caves, which were sacred sites with seems
like connections to the afterlife, And of course this matches
up with the way caves were viewed by peoples and
(38:49):
other parts of the world as well. The stones were
used in ambush attacks, in skirmishes, but also sometimes in
fights to the death would occur, but it seems like
a lot of these battles, based on some of the commentaries,
may not have been typically that lethal. So yeah, this
does line up with this idea of communication. It's not
(39:12):
necessarily about going out and absolutely murdering the competition, but
driving them away from resources that you're looking to control.
And in the paper, the authors also mostly speculate on
accuracy here, and part of this was based on accounts
of other throwing techniques by other advanced stone or club
(39:33):
throwing groups, but they speculate that high accuracy was likely
within twenty yards or eighteen meters roughly, but greater distance
accuracy was certainly possible. And I think this makes sense
when you consider the likely scenarios in which these stones
are being used. So yeah, any kind of sort of
tabletop gaming scenario that you have in your mind should
(39:57):
probably set aside. It sounds like most of these the
the encounters these battles would have involved like one individual
against one another individual or one small group against another.
It seems like skirmishes and small ambushes were sort of
the typical encounter context for their usage. So anyway, it's
a fascinating paper. It's available on jay Store if anyone
(40:20):
wants to read more. They really get in depth about
the history of it and various mostly Western commentators who
are looking at it, and also how the use of
the stones was disappeared and then the stones went out
throughout the world and then were to certain degrees brought
back or studied. Now, this was certainly the most to
(40:41):
me anyway remarkable account of stone throwing I came across,
but not the only account of specialized throwing stones. I
ran across the work of Guy Steibel talking about archaeology
finds in Jerusalem and the accumulated weapons and AMMO that
they were finding. This was a paper that came out
(41:02):
on twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
This is from a.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Chapter titled Military Equipment in a larger collection of papers
titled Jerusalem Excavations in the Tiropean Valley. And yeah, there's
a lot of discussion of things like the things you
would expect to find, sling stones and so forth, other
types of projectiles. But then there's an interesting part where
(41:27):
he mentions he starts talking about what may have been
stones that were expressly collected and even crafted for throwing.
Quote three flint balls have a single flat face, unlike
weights or grinding stones that frequently exhibit multiple flat surfaces.
They were ideal for heaping on top of battlements, as
(41:49):
modern experiments have demonstrated. In light of parallels from both
Palestine and the Roman West, it appears that the use
of hand thrown stones was much more prevalent than had
been previously appreciated in modern scholarship.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Oh, that's interesting. The single flat face. So that would
be a stone that was modified or selected to have
a single flat face in order to make it easier
to stack in a pile, and so it wouldn't roll away.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah, yeah, for use on battlements, which I guess also
the other side of that is, not only do you
not want your AMMO to roll away, you don't want
it to roll off the battlements with you know, fatal
gravity of sense potentially if you're not meaning to drop it. Yeah,
I've never thought about this before. I mean, I've certainly
(42:39):
researched siege scenarios before, where it's very obvious that if
you have the advantage of battlements, there's a great deal
you can do without the need for the power of
a bow. You can just drop things on people underneath.
And it was dropping things on your besiegers was a
favorite tactic. Be that you could drop rock, you could
(43:00):
drop various burning things, oils, et cetera, all manner of things,
and again with lethal intensity. But this idea of not
just having stones, but stones that had been to some
degree altered or manufactured or crafted in order to just
stack up there so they're ready to go, but they're
also not rolling out of sight and posing a danger
(43:22):
to anyone who might just say, be working beneath. Now,
there are also several interesting cases, probably many many more
on top of what I'm going to highlight here of
hand thrown clubs and throwing sticks. So you know, we've
(43:45):
been talking about throwing rocks, but of course throwing sticks
is just sort of the other side of the equation here,
and you find example of these traditions just throughout the
world on various continents. The throwing stick was used as
a hunting tool by prehistoric peoples, and we have examples
of these going back at least some three hundred thousand years.
(44:05):
One of the problems that this is something that's pointed
out in a paper I was looking at by Conrad
at All in nature, ecology and evolution, is that a
throwing stick is generally a wooden stick, and therefore it's
not always going to survive to become an artifact that
can be studied and interpreted, you know, hundreds of thousands
of years later. But the practice of hunting with thrown
(44:29):
sticks certainly survived. The ancient Egyptians retained a practice of
hunting with throwing sticks, and we see this commemorated both
in their hieroglyphics but also in art. I included an
image for you to look at here, Joe, where you
see an individual clearly out by the water side. There
are all these birds around and in one hand the
(44:52):
individual was holding up this throwing stick.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
And this is sort of an an induated club of
sorts that can be thrown.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah. Yeah, and I mean we also see the use
of this in other cultures as well. The hope He
tribes people of North America also used a type of
hunting sticks, sometimes referred to as a rabbit stick name
for the prey. You would go after this with this tool,
with this weapon. Throwing clubs throwing sticks were also used
in warfare scenarios and also in war related ceremonies and symbolism.
(45:27):
Fiji Islanders used beautiful and ceremonial throwing war clubs. These
were called ulahs, and you can look up examples of these.
Some key African traditions of throwing clubs are notable as well,
including the East African rungu as well as the knob
carry of southern and Eastern Africa. And these were used
(45:47):
for hunting in war, but also became highly symbolic social
signifiers as well. Yeah, but I feel like the idea
that the thrown blunt weapon the throwing club is something
that is often I guess glossed over in at least
in the Western mindset, you know, just again coming back
as always to things like Dungeons and Dragons, where we
(46:10):
wrap all these fantasy scenarios around the use of ranged
in melee weaponry. It's easy to dismiss the idea that, yeah,
that the club also is a potential range weapon, though
of course, I think Dungeons and Dragons does at least
have a boomerang in it, And the boomerang is probably
the most famous, and I guess the most exceptional of
(46:33):
the throne clubs that humans have developed over the ages.
The boomerang is exceptional because it's still essentially a throne
club that kills or injures via blunt force, but it
is also crafted to spin in just the right way
and by virtue of its shape, to generate an aerofoil,
(46:54):
which then increases the distance that it can be thrown.
So it's not only you know, throne but it also
begins to take on flight in a fascinating manner.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah. I remember being fascinated by the boomerang as far
back as when I was a little kid.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
Yeah, And according to Thomas Hewlett, we run into the
wooden artifact problem again with boomerangs, but convincing boomerangs have
been discovered as old as ten thousand years, so they've
been around for quite a while. There are returning boomerangs
and their non returning boomerangs. Non returning boomerangs were primarily weapons,
(47:33):
while returning boomerangs were I think more in the recreational
and symbolic and mythological sphere of things, but could also
be used apparently in hunting scenarios as some sort of
decoy for I think, birds of prey, but also as
a means of frightening and tended bird prey, So they
weren't without functional uses. And there are a lot of
(47:55):
things similar to these boomerangs that we find in other
cultures as well, like the Tamil people had a kind
of non returning boomerang of their own called a valari,
and you can look up various images of this as well.
Has a slight boomerang shape, kind of a tusk like shape.
Now going back to Thomas Coulett here, he points out
(48:16):
that broadly speaking, the evolution of range weaponry was initially
an evolution that had a lot to do with range.
Thrown weapons greatly increase the range at which human beings
may inflict harm. But then additional throwing technologies extend that range,
and this of course increases what we can do with
them from a hunting standpoint, but also provides advantages over
(48:38):
other human adversaries, at least under the right conditions. But
I think these examples show that it's not just a
matter of abandoning the use of hand thrown projectiles. We
retain the physical abilities as well as the basic skill sets,
and we see this reflected in our sports as well
as our weapon cultures. Hand thrown weapon traditions clearly survived
the advent of other range weapon technologies and in many
(49:01):
cases retained important cultural values as well. And there's one
final wrinkle here too that I almost completely blanked on.
I almost didn't have anything about this in the notes,
but then I of course remembered well. As we enter
into the age of explosives, hand thrown weaponry remains important
in the form of hand grenades. The more common variety
(49:22):
of grenade is of course made to be thrown by hand,
much like a throwing stone, more or less fits in
the human palm, though we also have the example of
the German stick hand grenade that was used in the
first and Second World Wars, and I think adopted by
some other groups as well during this period. But as
the name implies, this design features a long handle, and
(49:42):
these were thrown end over end, much like a hunting
stick or a thrown club. Now, in both cases, obviously,
given that this is an item that will explode, you
don't necessarily have to be as precise. It's not a
situation where you have to hit somebody in the head
with it or in the neck with it every time
for the weapon to be successful. Though I guess there
would be situations where you were trying to throw said
(50:03):
grenade into say a window or some sort of an
opening and a tank, etc.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Well, or like in other cases we've looked at to
compel behavior to drive people away from a particular location.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Yeah, I was thinking about Monty Python many months back,
and I of course thought of the Holy Hand Grenade
of Antioch, the magical weapon that is used against the
Killer Rabbit. And I remember looking around a little bit
just to see was there anything in use during the
general historic range that we're talking about here that would
(50:38):
have been like a grenade, And as I recall, there wasn't, really,
so I guess there is maybe a potential lag. There's
this kind of gap between the high age of stone
throwing and stick throwing as a viable weapon, and then
the emergence of explosives, which kind of reignites the need
(51:00):
to be able to throw precisely or at least with
some degree of precision. You don't want to throw a
hand grenade imprecisely, but we certainly see with hand grenades
that like the need for individuals to throw these things
becomes all the more important. I mean, you look at
images of say, modern soldiers training to throw hand grenades,
(51:22):
and there's a definite form to how you do it,
you know, like there's definite training in place, so precise
throwing of handheld objects remains a seemingly important part of
the modern military scenario.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
You know, I didn't plan it like this, but it's
interesting how this series began as us wanting to look
at examples of non human animals throwing, and ultimately the
main thing that I'm taking away from it is the
special role of throwing in the development of human culture,
in human cognition.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Yeah, yeah, I surprised by it as well, because, yeah,
we started off with the octopus and now here we
are talking about soldiers with grenades. We have to keep
the grenades away from the octopuses. By the way, Yes,
I should also point out I didn't even get into
the use of sharpened throwing weapons, but obviously that's a
(52:19):
huge part of weapon culture throughout history as well. I
don't know. I guess it felt like one step manufacturing
or materially away from just throwing a stick or throwing
a rock, So I didn't get into that, But obviously
there's a lot one could additionally discuss involving hand thrown axes,
hand thrown darts and knives and so forth. So I
(52:40):
guess different aerodynamic properties come into play with at least
some of those weapon designs. All right, we're gonna go
ahead and end it there, but we'd love to hear
from everyone out there if you have thoughts, feedback, experience
on anything we've discussed here in this episode or the
previous episodes regarding animals throwing things, humans throwing things, the
(53:05):
role that being able to throw something may have in
the development of language, and also just the various weapons
cultures martial arts that have involved hand thrown objects. If
you have anything to add about any of that, please
write in we would love to hear from you. Just
a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a
science podcast with core episodes publishing on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
(53:28):
On Mondays we do a listener mail and that's where
you can write in and we'll discuss some of the
mail that comes in. On Wednesdays we do a short
form artifact or monster fact episode, and then on Fridays
we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
a strange film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for
the future, to share something interesting, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
Listening to your favorite shows.
Speaker 3 (54:35):
H
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.