Humans Throwing Stuff

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. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb 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.

(00:26):
We've looked at alleged throwing behaviors and octopuses in uh in,
elephants in the mongoose. We definitely had a digression about
dogs with air Bud 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

(00:47):
particularly apt at. Humans are are very good at throwing,
especially compared to our nearest primate relatives. So like a
chimpanzee maybe on average three 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

(01:07):
for throwing? Well, we took a look at some 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 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

(01:31):
was somehow a necessary precursor for the evolution of probably
the most distinctly human trait language. Mm hmmm, So not
just that humans are good at throwing and good at language,
but that there is actually a a neurobiological link between
the two one comes from the other. Uh So, to

(01:52):
look at this question, I wanted to refer to a
paper by William D. Hopkins, Jamie L. Russell, and Jennifer A.
Schafer published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society b
Biological Sciences published in twenty called the Neural and Cognitive
Correlates of Aimed Throwing in Chimpanzees, a magnetic residence, image

(02:13):
and behavioral study on a unique form of social tool use.
So um, to begin, they cover some of the same
ground we did in the previous episode. Uh. You know
how unusual human 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

(02:35):
humans or just doing it as part of their natural
instinctual behaviors. UM. The authors here argued that in general,
throwing remains unsystematic in their words and other animals, and
I think this is fair. No other animal practices the
kind of generalized, skillful habitual throwing that we do, certainly
not without training by humans. Yeah, as we're discussing, the

(02:58):
previous episode 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. We we I think in the very first episode,
we discussed that sort of um, at least in my case, uh,
the strange pull to need to throw a ball with

(03:20):
my son when he was younger, uh, even though we
were not a baseball or softball family. But it was
just kind of this thing that I guess was like
nostalgic and 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. Um,
despite being very rusty at the whole softball baseball thing.

(03:43):
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 m or frisbee. Frisbee just as good in
my opinion. Yeah, and I mean there's also there's there's
a lot more throwing that goes on into like how
often do we find ourselves across the room from someone,

(04:03):
We request something and they give it a toss, 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 essential part, or at least one
aspect of a given sport. Right. But of course, apart

(04:23):
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 favor forceful overhand throwing. Um,

(04:49):
I remember those changes. They're like 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 of the biomechanical
bowstring to be released rapidly during the throw. And we
also talked about the argument that these changes appear to
coincide with evidence of meat becoming a bigger part of

(05:12):
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 uh and either way
increasing the availability of food energy. Now, one very interesting
thing about the adaptation for throwing is that it implies

(05:35):
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 waste,
the arm, and so forth, but it also implies changes
in cognition. An animal that can throw objects sourced from
the environment is showing a specialized way of thinking, and

(05:57):
not just a specialized way of moving. Now what do
I mean by this? Well, as one example, the author's
reference a specific captive chimpanzee who came up in the
last episode, Robi, remember the story of Santino, the chimpanzee
who was in a zoo and I believe Sweden was it?
I believe so, Yes, Santino, Yeah, poor Santino. The author's

(06:18):
right that Santino, who I guess was alive at the
time this paper was written. Quote, hides 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 rocks from a moat inside the enclosure prior to

(06:39):
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 that is forethought. Hmm. Adding to this,
the author's uh throwing their own observations of similar pre
planning behavior in chimpanzees and two other research which environments,

(07:01):
and they argue that the throwing quote, though often agonistic
and function and consequence agonistic meaning a sort of confrontational
aggressive behavior is not part of the apes display behavior. Indeed,
most instances of aimed throwing that we have observed occur
without any accompanying display behaviors such as pilo erection, hooting,

(07:22):
and charging, further suggesting an element of planning on the
part of the individual ape. Uh. 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.

(07:44):
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. Uh. The most

(08:07):
commonly 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 whole or enclosure of
some kind and then is eaten immediately. So examples here
would be cracking of nuts with with stones like nutcracking
is an example of ape tool use, but also termite

(08:28):
fishing with sticks, 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. Uh. You know, if if a behavior
leads to an immediate food reward, an animal can learn
to repeat basically any arbitrary set of actions. So you know,

(08:52):
chimpanzee gets delicious termites every time it h of course,
if it if it dips for them, that's one thing.
But maybe if it stands on one foot and gets
term it's every time. It may learn to stand on
one foot to get the meat. Yeah, and we see
this reflected in so many experiments involving animals over the years.
You know, can can you get an animal to manipulate

(09:13):
some sort of technological gadget in order to get a
food reward? 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 through
this kind of conditioning. But throwing, as practiced by apes
does not lead to an immediate food reward. In fact,

(09:33):
it rarely, if ever, leads to a food reward at all.
The author's write quote 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. Yeah,

(09:59):
because it's not the ape. And the scenario is throwing
the rock, hitting the human, and then by hitting the
human they drop an apple, right yeah. Now, from here,
the authors go on to discuss the the underappreciated complexity
of throwing. We also talked about this at length in
the previous episode. But you know, suffice to say, forceful, precise,

(10:20):
overhand throwing is an extremely demanding task, not only for
the muscles but for the brain, uh, requiring split second
coordination of perceptual judgments, all kinds of things. You know,
how far away is the target, isn't 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

(10:45):
to precisely time a rapid sequence of muscular movements, and
other authors have previously suggested that quote the increased selection
for neural synchrony of rapid muscular sequence routines associated with
actions such as throwing are similar to the motor programming

(11:06):
demands of language and speech, and therefore engage similar neural systems,
notably broke as area. In other words, 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 perform speech. And one idea that

(11:29):
gets wrapped up in this is the role of brain lateralization,
segmenting of brain processes to one hemisphere 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

(11:51):
for throwing, and these right hand preferences suggest left hemisphere
dominance in the brain and these 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 and the right hemisphere to
the left, and so forth. Some researchers have pointed this

(12:12):
out in the context of the fact that the left
hemisphere also contains the brain regions, notably Broca's area, that
dominate the production of speech. Broca'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

(12:35):
at the University of Washington at Seattle, who, observing that
pent of people prefer to throw with the right arm,
Calvin hypothesized that the left hemisphere'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

(12:59):
hypothesis in nine three. It was called The Throwing Madonna.
Oh didn't they adapted this into the film? Um a
lead of their own? Right? Was Madonna in that believe? So? Okay?
Was she the picture in the movie? Oh? I don't remember,
but I mean surely she threw a ball at least once.

(13:19):
I mean, there's a lot of of of throwing in baseball, Yeah,
you throw no matter what position you are. I guess
the picture throws the most. There's no crying in baseball,
but there was throwing in baseball. There's a lot that much.
I remember for the film. Okay, so Madonna was definitely
throwing no matter what position she played. Um no, but
unfortunately did not become the basis of the movie as
far as I know. Instead, it was a place where

(13:41):
Calvin laid out an interesting, uh sort of story, a
possible series of developments that could have led to the
development of language via the stepping stone of of capacity
for throwing. So the story goes like this, lateralization evolved
for one handed throwing with the right hand, specifically so

(14:05):
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, 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

(14:27):
about it at all, I pretty much always when I
hold my baby, hold her on on the left side
of my torso and so if she like falls asleep
against me, and her head is going to be on
the left side of my chest, and that from my
point of view, which is also the side where the
heartbeat is closer. I never planned it that way, that

(14:47):
that just sort of happened. And I was talking to
my wife and she said, yeah, most often she 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, but I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I could 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. But yes,

(15:11):
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 over really young infants. Yeah,
I don't know. I guess it varies from from child
to child, depends on how big they get and at
what point they want that distance. Thank, Okay, well, so

(15:37):
it's 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. Um, I find it more
compelling than some other hypotheses that seemed to be on
offer at the time. One that's sited. I was reading
a review of this book by Calvin that cited a
previous hypothesis that the right handedness of because um men

(16:02):
in battle, I guess prehistoric battle needed to like hold
a shield above their above their heart on the left side.
I was like, I get out of here. This this
discussion reminds me of a painting, might painting that I
hadn't thought of in a bit, I believe. What is
the title of this piece is Two Mothers by Leon

(16:23):
Maxim of Fivery Um. That's if I'm pronouncing that correctly.
It's f A I V R E. But it's a
pretty stunning piece in which we see this vision of
of a prehistoric mother with with very modern touches to it.
But she's standing here in some sort of uh, you know,

(16:44):
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 sex, some sort of a a stone weapon,
like a wooden wooden half with a with a stone blade,

(17:04):
some sort of like you know, primitive axe or club.
And she's staring back into the shadows behind her where
this is kind of like cave environment, and there's clearly
an animal lurking there, an animal emerging from the shadows.
And I think this is supposed to be the other mother,
the mother that is hunting her. And I have no
idea of this this uh, this piece has has any

(17:26):
connection to 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.
It is a kind of beautiful painting. Yeah, her hair
is perfect too, like she's really this mom's really got
it together, perfect hair, protecting the children, ready to brain

(17:46):
a panther with some sort of a stone weapon. Anyway,
whatever the cause of the right hand lateralization for sequential
motor control in in the throwing, uh, the the hypothesis
goes on from here to suggest that sequential motor control
regions that made us so good at at tossing a

(18:07):
stone with one hand were eventually commondered by selection pressure
for communication and shifted 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 that
could be the case. I think Calvin argued for a
transitional stage where the original language was more gesture based,

(18:29):
like gesturing with the hands maybe, which would have then
transitioned into speech production with the mouth. Again, 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

(18:52):
of the population for throwing objects. Human ancestors get really
good at throwing with that one hand, maybe cradling a
baby in the other and or doing something else. And
then you could argue that the lateralization for precise sequential
motor activity in the left brain uh to power throwing,
eventually provides the neurological scaffolding for the left brain's capacity

(19:15):
for language and speech. Now, what was the actual experiment
in 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

(19:37):
we do, but some throw sometimes, So what if anything
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

(19:58):
would be most similar to the area of the human
brain involved in motor control for throwing and for speech,
and this would be quote the homologue to Broca's area.
Remember again broke as areas involved in speech production and humans.
And then they also say as well as the motor
hand area of the precentral gyrus termed the knob K

(20:18):
and O B. And what they found was that in
both of these areas, in the chimpanzee equivalent of Broca's
area 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

(20:41):
the hemisphere contralateral to the chimpanzees preferred throwing hand. So
what they're saying is it's 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 like to throw with those particular regions had a
higher proportion of white matter on the opposite side of

(21:02):
the brain. Also, they assessed the chimpanzees in this study
with what is called a Primate Cognition Test BATTERY or
pct B, which is, uh, you know, a sort of
an s a t for for for chimpanzees, standard tests
on all kinds of mental abilities, you know, uh, tons
of things, spatial memory, causality, inference, tool property recognition, gaze following,

(21:27):
and so forth. And they were looking at, well, are
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

(21:50):
inclined to throw were also better at social communication. So
the author's right quote these results suggest that chimpanzees that
have learned 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 hominin evolution,

(22:13):
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 think this is

(22:33):
far from proven. We would need much more robust evidence
before you could endorse this specific evolutionary story as 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. M So eight throws the bone,
the bone spins around, the bone becomes a space station,

(22:57):
just as Kubrick promised this. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Yeah,
I want to get back into this idea of early humans,
especially throwing stones as weapons and throwing other things as weapons. Uh.
You know, as we discussed in the last episode, we
we talked about some of the ideas concerning the development
of ranged weapon technology and prehistoric humans. This idea that

(23:19):
what first begins as a way of engaging and agonistic
communication could transform into just a way of physically sending
a message to another species via projectile. But then eventually
that begins to get in this way to manipulate their
behavior at range, especially in the case of power scavenging,
and ultimately it can be used as a way to

(23:39):
hunt prey animals. And as we were actually recording that episode,
my mind kept turning to these images of some sort
of prehistoric warfare scenario in which some you know, entirely
to kubra cky prehistoric people were employing various weapons and
and kind of probably also probably a slightly to table
top war game manner or where you have you know,

(24:01):
units of bone wielding beaters moving forward to engage in
some melee attacks, and then maybe you have some units
of rock throwers behind them. Um, and you know this
this felt kind of silly in my head, maybe even
a little Gary Larson uh esque in my head, a
little far side, But then I started looking into it
more because of course, you know, rock throwers were an

(24:22):
important part of of of of our history, and when
you start looking into the history of not only range weaponry,
but hand thrown range weaponry, it gets pretty fascinating. Well yeah,
I mean, I think one of the main things that
striking is rediscovering how potent to force simple thrown objects are,

(24:42):
even in an era where where powered projectile technology like
bows or crossbows or even guns exist. 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 realized that it's

(25:03):
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 on top of that,
a volley of thrown rocks from multiple assailants uh even
more dangerous. And of course we see this reflected in
the use of stoning as a form of execution from
ancient times through through modern times. But I didn't want

(25:25):
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 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,

(25:47):
and we greatly increased our ability to strategically employ those
thrown stones. But then we got why, and then we
coach We probably got wiser about how we selected stones, granted,
but then eventually we're gonna level upright, You're gonna up
raid to using something like a sling, a spear or
a spear thrower, a bow and arrow across bow, etcetera,

(26:08):
all the way up through the modern era. And it's
I think it's easy to think of this as a
linear progression, or like a video game skill tree, a
situation where you could you're you're yelling at the screen, Hey,
don't equip the throwing rock, you fool. You have a spear,
Now equip the spear. Yes, yes, video game logic per
pervades our our thoughts in every way. Yeah, but of
course that this is not exactly how things pan out.

(26:30):
For a number of reasons, speaking broadly in terms of
just weaponry in general, materials are one factor, but 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 not be
a good reason to completely abandon the hand thrown stone, right.

(26:54):
I mean, you can imagine cases where people are having
great success with with just hand thrown stones, and and
why why fixed what's not broken? Yeah? And then if
something also becomes a part of culture, becomes a part
of a martial art um and a weapon tradition, uh,
and then there's this added incentive to keep it around.
So I started looking into some examples from Polynesian weaponry

(27:19):
and martial arts. The first thing I ran across was
an interesting mention in the Coming of the Maori Weapons,
a text by New Zealand anthropologist and doctor t Ranghi
Heroa who lived eighteen seventy seven through ninette. In discussing
the prevalence for spears and clubs in Polynesian history, he
also discusses the swing as a primary range weapon along

(27:42):
with the spear, and then he shares the following quote,
stones were also thrown by hand and early European voyagers
have reported this form of attack more than the use
of the swing. The bow and arrow, while president 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

(28:04):
a chiefly sport in which archers clad in special costume
shot for distance from raised stone platforms. Now, obviously this
is an older source here, but instantly reading this you realize, well,
this is true. It raises interesting possibilities about the dependability
of throne stones as weaponry even as other technologies come online. Right,

(28:25):
so you could have the technology of a bow but
still prefer hand thrown stones for some utilities. Yeah, and uh,
the advantages of the bow, of course are well documented.
You know. And none of this, none of this wo
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.

(28:47):
But um, and and it's true that the use of
the bow was widespread not only in ancient armies but
among hunter gatherers. But as Thomas Skult points out in
a section on range, Weaponry and 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

(29:09):
them surely being aware of the technology via contact with
the tourists Straight Islanders who used bows. That they were
still people that that retained the use of ranged weaponry.
That depended on on hand thrown objects, and will come
back to the most famous uh classification of hand thrown
objects that they used in a bit. But but where

(29:31):
I really got fascinated with all of this was it
was a paper from two thousand and eleven. This was
published in the Journal of the Polynesian Society by Barbara
Isaac and Guinaria Isaac titled Unexpected Trajectories, a History of
New Way and Throwing Stones. The authors here describe the
war stones of New Way. New Way is an island

(29:54):
that's um fift miles or dred kilometers northeast of News
Zealand and When Captain James Cook visited the island in
seventeen seventy four, he dubbed at 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 orange just interior and if in

(30:18):
the teeth or rubbed on the body might look like blood.
But this also clearly reflects 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

(30:39):
also hostile to his landing attempts and his naturalists. The
naturalists on on this particular voyage, Andrews Sparman was injured
by a thrown stone. I believe it got him in
the arm. Mm hmm. The New Way here they were
they were not just picking up random stones and throwing
them either. Uh, this is where it gets really fast thing.

(31:00):
They had a highly refined approach to the use of
hand thrown range stone weaponry. According to Isaac and Isaac,
the 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 swing launch stones were not uncommon among other people

(31:21):
who are encountered on islands from this vast region. So comparatively,
there wasn't much Western commentary on these throwing stones. But
the throwing stones of of new A, 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

(31:44):
that were subsequently taken off the island after Western contact.
Thank thank so. These wars stones, Uh, you know, the
crazy thing about them is that, again these are not
just stones that were picked up or even stones that

(32:06):
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 made
of I think predominantly limestone crafted items. So you might
think of this as more like an arrow or an

(32:28):
axe head or something, but it is a stone for
throwing with the hand right right. The people here would
harvest the stone, apparently from stalactites and stalagmites in naturally
occurring caves on the island and then wear them down
in the into the desired shape by working them over
with other pieces of stone or with pieces of coral.

(32:51):
So we're talking considerable manufacturing effort going into these. Again,
they're not just picked up off the ground. They're not
even um 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. Um.
They were often compared to small cannon balls by by

(33:13):
Western commentators, but the difference is that they were elongated
a little bit on the two opposing ends. You can
look up pictures of these online and they 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 lines. I was gonna say, lemon, yeah, yeah,

(33:37):
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 football as you might
have seen if you were a child, uh you know,
back in the eighties or something. Sorry, I was just

(33:58):
briefly amused by the concept of a toy football. Well,
well you have the functional football is for serious business,
for the sport of American football, and then you have
you have something that's that's less serious. This is a football,
this is not for playing with. So you did have
Western observers though, that we're figuring a lot of this out,

(34:19):
that these war stones were indeed crafted items, that they
were made out of limestone. Uh, that people would harvest
the stone from againstalactites and stalagmites, and uh, there's some
really interesting takes on this that are reported in this uh,
this paper. UH. In eight sixty eight, Missionary Thomas Powell
wrote that quote, this fact is remarkable as an indication

(34:41):
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,
and in this particular they anticipated the European science of

(35:02):
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 war stones that
were sometimes used that might have been made of other materials,

(35:24):
one of of bassault, one of coral, for example. You
definitely have examples of like a black um a stone
of black war stone, but limestone seems to be the
primary material. They were highly prized and were used exclusively
for conflict um and there was apparently a lot of
conflict on the on the island. You know, this before

(35:47):
there were any Westerners even, and part of it had
to do with uh, you know, droughts would occur and
there was a lot of skirmishing for available resources. But
they didn't hunt with them apparently, so birds were hunted
with uh 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.

(36:12):
Warriors would carry them in bags or on belts, and
if they ran out of ammo, it's mentioned that they
would 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

(36:33):
up your your AMMO retrieve them. Because other sources mentioned
that they often they had names, they had histories, histories
of violence, and so these these particular stones would kind
of resonate with importance to the individual who wielded it. HM.
So it's interesting that if the stones are you know,

(36:54):
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. Yeah, yeah, I
think so. Um. Here was another great quote. This one

(37:16):
is reference in the paper as well from anthropologist Edwin Loeb,
who wrote the following about the 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 a plated like a matt. The kafa was about
six to seven inches wide and was customarily four fathoms

(37:38):
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 the the authors here they they point
out that these Nuegan stones, these war stones, um. There

(37:59):
were songs about them um. And part of their importance
also may have had to do with the fact that
they were products of the caves which were sacred sides
with it seems like connections to the afterlife. And of
course this matches up with the way caves were viewed
by people's and other parts of the world as well.
The stones were used in ambush attacks and skirmishes, but

(38:22):
also sometimes in fights to the death uh would occur,
but it seems like a lot of these battles, based
on some of the commentaries UH, may not have been
typically that lethal. UH. So, Yeah, this does line up
with this idea of communication. It's not necessarily about going
out and absolutely murdering the competition, but driving them away

(38:45):
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 throwing groups. But they
speculate that high accuracy was likely within twenty yards or

(39:05):
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. Uh So, yeah,
any kind of sort of tabletop gaming scenario um that
you have in your mind should probably set aside. It
sounds like most of these these encounters, these battles would

(39:29):
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 the typical uh, encounter
context for their usage. So anyways, it's a fascinating paper.
It's available on j store if anyone wants to read more. Uh.
They really get in depth about the history of it

(39:50):
and various uh uh mostly Western commentators who are looking
at it. And also how these how the use of
the stones was you know, disappeared and then the stone
owns went out throughout the world and then we're to
certain degrees brought back or studied. Now, this was certainly
the most to me anyway remarkable account of stone throwing.
I came across, but not the only account of specialized

(40:13):
throwing stones. I ran across the work of Guy Stible
talking about archaeology finds in Jerusalem and the accumulated weapons
and AMMO that they were finding. Uh, this was a
paper that came out on ten. This is from a
chapter title Military Equipment in a larger collection of papers

(40:36):
titled Jerusalem Excavations in the Tyropean Valley. And yeah, so
there's a 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 he mentions he starts talking about what

(40:57):
may have been stones that were brestley 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 modern experiments have demonstrated. In a light

(41:19):
of parallels from both Palestine and the Roman West, it
appears that the use of hand thrown stones was much
more prevalent than has been previously appreciated in modern scholarship. 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

(41:40):
stack in a pile, and so it wouldn't roll away. 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 with you know, fatal gravity
ascents potentially, um, if you're not meaning to drop it. Um. Yeah,

(42:01):
I've never I've never thought about this before. Um. I mean,
I've certainly researched siege scenarios before, where it's 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 and dropping things on

(42:22):
your besiegers was it was a favorite tactic that you
could drop rocks, you could drop various burning things, oils, etcetera,
all manner of things. And again with with legal intensity,
but this idea of 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

(42:43):
they're ready to go, but they're also not rolling out
of out of out of sight and posing a danger
to anyone who might just say, be working beneath. Now,
there are also several interesting cases of probably many many

(43:05):
more on top of what I'm gonna highlight here, of
hand thrown clubs and throwing sticks. So you know, we've
been talking about throwing rocks, but of course throwing sticks.
It's just sort of the the other side of the
equation here. And you find examples of these traditions just
throughout the world on various continents um. The throwing stick
was used as a hunting tool by prehistoric peoples, and

(43:28):
we have examples of these going back at least some
three hundred thousand years UM. One of the problems that
and 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, um,

(43:50):
you know, hundreds of thousands of a few years later,
but the practice of hunting with thrown sticks certainly survived.
The ancient Egyptians written aimed a practice of hunting with
throwing sticks, and we see this commemorated both in their
hieroglyphics but also in um in art. Uh I included
an image for you to look at here, Joe, where

(44:11):
you see an individual um clearly out by the water side.
They are all these birds around and in one hand
the individual was holding up this, this throwing stick. And
this is sort of a um an an indwaited club
of sorts that can be thrown. Yeah, yeah, and I
mean we we also see the use of this in
other cultures as well. The hope He tribes people of

(44:33):
North America also used a type of hunting sticks, sometimes
referred to as a rabbit stick name for the prey
you would go after with this, with this tool, with
this weapon. Throwing clubs throwing sticks were also used in
um in warfare scenarios and also in um In in
war related ceremonies and uh and symbolism. Fiji islanders us

(44:55):
beautiful and ceremonial throwing war clubs. Uh These were called
ula us and you can look up examples of these.
Some key African traditions of throwing clubs are notable as well,
including the East African rungou as well as the knob
carry of Southern and Eastern Africa. And these were used
for hunting and war, but also became highly symbolic social

(45:17):
signifiers as well. Yeah, but I feel like you, the
idea that the throne blunt weapon, the throwing club is
something that is often I guess glossed over and in
at least in the Western mindset. Uh. You know, just
again coming back as always two things like Dungeons and Dragons,
where we we wrap all these fantasy scenarios around, uh,

(45:39):
the use of ranged and melee weaponry. Um, it's it's
easy to dismiss the idea that, yeah, that the club
also is a potential range weapon. Uh though of course
I think Dungeons and Dragons does at least have a
boomerang in it. Um. And the boomerang is probably the
most famous and I guess the most exceptional of the

(46:00):
throne clubs, uh that that humans have developed over the ages.
The boomerang is is exceptional because it's it's still essentially
a throne club that kills our injurs via blunt force,
but it is also crafted to spin in just the
right way and by virtue of its shape to generate
in an aerofoil, which then increases the distance that it

(46:24):
can be thrown. So it's not only you know, throne,
but it also begins to take on flight, uh in
a in a fascinating manner. Yeah. I remember being fascinated
by the boomerang as as far back as when I
was a little kid. Yeah. And according to to Thomas Hewlett,
we run into the wooden artifact problem again with boomerangs.

(46:44):
But convincing boomerangs have been discovered as old as ten
thousand years uh, so that they've they've been around for
quite a while. There are returning boomerangs and their non
returning boomerangs. Um. Non returning boomerangs were primarily weapons, while
returning boomerangs were I think more in the recreational and
symbolic and mythological sphere of things um, but could also

(47:07):
be used apparently in hunting scenarios as some sort of
decoy uh for I think birds of prey, but also
as a means of frightening intended bird prey. So they
weren't without um functional uses. And there are a lot
of 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 of Alari,

(47:31):
and you can look at the various images of this
as well. Has a slight boomerang shape, kind of a
tusk like shape. Yeah. Now, going back to Thomas cool
It here, he points out that broadly speaking, the evolution
of range weaponry was initially uh an evolution that had
a lot to do with range. Throwing weapons greatly increase

(47:52):
the range at which human beings may inflict harm. But
then additional throwing technologies extend that range, and this of
course in creases what we can do with them from
a hunting standpoint, but also provides advantages over other human adversaries,
at least under the right conditions. But I think these
examples show that it's not just a matter of abandoning

(48:12):
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 ranged weapon technologies and in many cases retained
important cultural values as well. And there's one final wrinkle

(48:34):
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 venture into the
age of explosives, hand thrown weaponry remains important in the
form of hand grenades. The more common variety of grenade
is of course made to be thrown by hand, much
like a throwing stone, more or less fits in the

(48:54):
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 these
were thrown end over end, much like a hunting stick
or a throne club. Now, in both cases, obviously, given

(49:16):
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 grenade
into say a window or some sort of an opening
and a tank, etcetera. Well, or like in other cases

(49:39):
we've looked at to compel behavior, to like drive people
away from a particular location. Yeah, I was thinking about
Monty Python many months back, and I of course thought
of the Holy hand grenade of antioch U, the magical
weapon that is used against the the killer rabbit and um.
And I remember looking around a little bit like just

(49:59):
to see is there anything in use during the general
historic range that we're talking about here that would have
been like a grenade, And as I recalled, there wasn't really,
so I guess there is maybe a potential lag. Uh.
There's this kind of gap between the high age of
stone throwing and stick throwing as a viable weapon and

(50:21):
then the emergence of explosives, which kind of reignites the
the need to be able to throw precisely or at
least with some degree of precision. You don't want to
throw a hand garnaide imprecisely. Um, but we certainly say
with hand grenades that like the need for individuals to

(50:41):
throw these things becomes all the more important. I mean, Um,
you look at images of say modern soldiers training to
throw hand grenades, and there's a definite like uh form
to how you do it, you know, like there's definite
training in place, so uh precise throwing of handheld object
remains uh seemingly important part of of the modern military scenario.

(51:05):
You know, I didn't plan it like this, but it's
interesting how this series began as us uh wanting to
look at examples of non human animals throwing and uh
and ultimately the main thing that I'm taking away from
it is is the special role of throwing in in
the development of human culture and human cognition. Yeah. Yeah,

(51:26):
I was surprised by as well, because yeah, it was
we started off with the occopus and now here we
are talking about soldiers with grenades. We have to keep
the grenades away from the octopus is by the way, yes,
I should also point I didn't even get into the
use of sharpened throwing weapons, but obviously that's a huge
part of weapon culture throughout history as well. I don't know,

(51:49):
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 a fationally discussed involving hand thrown axes,
hand thrown darts and knives and so forth. So I
guess different aerodynamic properties come into play with at least

(52:10):
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, uh feedback
experience on anything we've discussed here in this episode or
the previous episodes regarding animals throwing things, humans throwing things, UM,

(52:31):
the the role that uh that that being able to
throw something may have in the development of language UM,
and also just the various UM weapons cultures martial arts
that have involved hand thrown objects. If you have anything
to add about any of that police right in, we
would love to hear from you. Just a reminder that
Stuffed by Your Mind is a science podcast with core

(52:53):
episodes publishing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday's we do
a listener mail, and that's that's what you can write
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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 huch thanks to our audio producer J. J. Pauseway.

(53:15):
If you would like to get in touch with us
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(53:35):
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