Experts say prehistoric humans may have stuck spears into the ground to kill mammoths | Anthropology

When it came to killing huge animals, prehistoric hunters faced a mammoth task – literally. Researchers have now shed new light on how they probably did it.

Experts are studying sharp stone points made by the Clovis Indians, who inhabited the American continent for about 13,000 years. They believe that these tribes may have rammed their weapons into the ground pointing upwards to impale attacking animals, rather than hurling their spears at huge animals such as giant bison, mammoths or giant sloths.

“We are only now realizing that people in many cultures have been using stocked pike to hunt or defend against megafauna for thousands of years,” said Dr. Scott Byram of the University of California, Berkeley, one of the study's co-authors.

He added that hunters who used pikes often encouraged large game to attack them, and that a planted pike could generate far more force than a hand-thrust or thrown spear. “It follows that pikes would have been preferable against aggressive megafauna,” he said.

In an article in the journal Plos One, the team notes that although Clovis points are well known, no intact weapons have been found, making the exact purpose of the points unclear.

However, they point out that historical sources – including paintings of wild boar hunts and descriptions of bear, lion and jaguar hunts – show people using stabbing weapons by bracing them to the ground when hunting large animals. However, this practice was also used to defend against predators and charging warhorses in military battles.

To explore the idea that the Clovis people might have used their stone points in a similar way, the team conducted experiments with replicas of what they thought might have looked like weapons, with the stone point secured between a wooden pole and a bone rod using lashing straps.

The team found that a sharp Clovis point could pierce cow hide with relatively little force, but would break if dropped point-down onto an oak board (which would be equivalent to an encounter with bone). However, the team found that they could adjust the lashings to break apart in the latter scenario, releasing the point without breaking but potentially allowing the point to penetrate deeper into an animal.

Byram added that the shape of certain Clovis points would have made very effective pike points, and such an application could explain the discovery of complete Clovis points with intact mammoth remains.

The team is now planning experiments with a kind of replica of a mammoth – a block of ballistic gel attached to a moving object with a large mass – to find out how the outcome might change if the force on impact is not only in the direction of the head.

Prof. Metin Eren of the anthropology department at Kent State University in the US, who was not involved in the work, said it was not the first time archaeologists had suggested a “pike use” for Clovis points.

But he added: “The main problem, of course, is that archaeologists have never discovered any kind of spear or arrow shaft made of Clovis wood, let alone any hard evidence that spears were actually used as pikes. We really need to make sure that our conclusions do not go beyond our experiments and, more importantly, beyond the actual archaeological finds.”