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Big Animals and the Humans That Love (to eat) Them - TAS 276
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Today’s episode is all about mega-fauna and human interactions. Our first story takes us to a creek in Iowa where the first complete mastodon for that state has been found. Next we go to UC Berkeley where researchers think they’ve figured out, through research and experimental archaeology, how early humans took down those big animals. Finally we move over to Spain where new research is suggesting that Neanderthals didn’t ONLY eat big, slow, animals but adapted to take down smaller game. They were smarter than we think they were, of course!
Links
- Segment 1
13,600-year-old prehistoric mammal found preserved in Iowa creek, researchers say - Segment 2
Early humans used an interesting technique to hunt big animals
Clovis points and foreshafts under braced weapon compression: Modeling Pleistocene megafauna encounters with a lithic pike - Segment 3
New Archaeological Discoveries Challenge Widely Held Beliefs About Neanderthals
Living on the edge: Abric Pizarro, a MIS 4 Neanderthal site in the lowermost foothills of the southeastern Pre-Pyrenees (Lleida, Iberian Peninsula)
Contact
- Chris Webster
[email protected] - Rachel Roden
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Transcript
Introduction to The Archaeology Show
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 276. On today's show, we talk about early humans hunting big game and Neanderthals hunting small game. Let's dig a little deeper.
Exploring Acadia National Park and Connectivity
00:00:28
Speaker
Big animals. Well, that was no flinging.
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome to the archaeology show. Hello. All right. So we are still in Acadia National Park. We are. It's so gorgeous here. I just love it so much. Yeah. I love being in the woods alone. I know. and And shout out to the people that wrote to us this last week who may have seen us. I don't think they did. but and And I think I wrote back to them, actually. And I didn't tell you this. I told told you I wrote back to them. Because they said, oh, we saw you at Loop B. And I was like, oh. Because they said, I saw you at Loop B. And we saw a rig with Starlink. And I was like, well, we didn't even put out our Starlink, except for yesterday we did. Because for some reason, our T-Mobile, after five days, just like stopped working. Yeah. That's T-Mobile for you. I know. Everything seems to be fine today. yeah
00:01:23
Speaker
But i then I wrote back to him and I realized I wrote back, oh, I think we're in loop A, actually. I don't know what loop we're in. I don't know where we're at. and We're actually are in loop B. We're in loop B. Yeah. We're spot one in loop B. Yeah, spot one. By the time this comes out, we'll be gone from that spot. Yeah. yeah but sort ah yeah Or do, I guess, and maybe make some new friends. I don't know. B1 is actually, you don't get a lot of traffic over here because there's only five spots yeah that are accessible through this little side loop of Loop B. Yeah, and we're like on the edge because it's like this pullout spot and we just have nothing but woods on the other side of our
E-bike Adventures and Challenges
00:02:00
Speaker
campground. and
00:02:01
Speaker
I don't know. It's just so quiet and it's so pretty. And I do wish we were a little bit closer to the the coast because that's, that's the draw of this side of Acadia is that you have this beautiful rocky coastline all the way around Scudic point it's called. And we're not that close to it. Like we are on our bikes. We can hop on and be there in five minutes yeah or car even quicker, but I kind of wish I could just like walk there from my camp spot. Scooted points a little further. out Oh, the point is yeah, but you can like get get out towards the water. Yeah, but pretty quickly from here Yeah, I know I did a ah bike ride on my e-bike the other day It was intended to be like more of a a workout ride. Mm-hmm It's hard to do a workout ride on an e-bike it is but if you take down the the pedal assist You don't really want to go down at zero unless you really want to work out the bike weighs 70 pounds. It's too heavy. Yeah i yeah
00:02:50
Speaker
That would be a hell of a workout. And it's actually a little bit too much stress on the bike. They're not really designed for that. Like the pedals and stuff, unless you really upgrade all that stuff, you'll just wreck them. yeah So you really need it kind of on pedal assist one. But if you're going to do a workout on an e-bike ride, you just focus on kind of high cadence. So yeah your you keep your gears low. You just keep them on like two, three, four. yeah know So your pedal cadence is high yeah and your heart rate is high. yeah High speed, all that stuff. And I did that.
00:03:16
Speaker
I didn't charge up our batteries from the last time we used it. I picked the one with the highest charge because we had our batteries disconnected and I ran out of power and my e-bike had two bars of five and I was like, I got plenty near the end of the ride. And I was coming across the island, or this island, the area here. Yeah, the point. The point. And it was like the hilliest part and the whole thing just went down to zero. Battery out. But it went into this crazy low power mode where I still had like a half like the lowest amount of pedal assist. And I was I was just like cranking this bike up these hills because it was almost no pedal assist. So I think this I know this isn't the electric.
00:03:56
Speaker
biking podcast, but just to like talk about it a little bit more. So this is our second type of e-bike that we've had because our first ones were stolen off of our RV last year when we were in Vegas. Thanks Vegas. Yeah. We had Rad e-bikes, which are a really great brand and we love those bikes, but they're very expensive and we replaced them with some slightly cheaper ones. Right. I was actually going for just bigger, more durable. Yeah. Yes. They have fat tires. These ones seem like they would be really good for the kind of touring bike riding that we like to do. They're called it's TST as a brand. Yeah.
00:04:26
Speaker
But I just, I mean, there's things about this brand. They're just not as good. So I think like do your research is the thing that we would say about buying any bike because they're all very expensive. Like there's not a cheap one, not really.
From E-bikes Back to Archaeology
00:04:38
Speaker
And just do your research and make sure you like it. Cause like the battery life on these ones, you should have been able to do that entire ride that you did in addition to the one we did on Sunday with one full battery charge. And they were full when we started Sunday. yeah So the fact that you couldn't is just like, it's a little bit, It's a little disappointing on the battery life, for sure. so All right, well, that was a preview of our upcoming RV podcast. so It totally was.
00:05:02
Speaker
Let's go back to like god big animals and the humans that love to eat them. Yeah. That's the title of
Mastodon Skull Discovery in Iowa
00:05:09
Speaker
our podcast. So, okay, so this first article titled 13,600 year old prehistoric mammal found preserved in an Iowa creek. And I founded this in the Miami Herald, but when you start looking, it's kind of everywhere, but it was really not a paper. It was published on the, I think the Iowa archeology Like their their social media. Their Facebook page. Yeah, I see a Facebook post and I see like a YouTube link, I think. Yeah. They were just kind of reporting on news. yeah It's not a paper. Yeah. um They probably will write it up, but this is yeah this falls into that category of like press release type of stuff that we cover sometimes, which is just as fun and interesting as the the official peer reviewed stuff. so right So what they found was a mastodon, which is not an interchangeable word with mammoth. They are a separate animals. They are different. Yeah. But the excavation was from the banks of a creek in Wayne County, Iowa, which is about 80 miles east of, east or west? I didn't write it down, but it's 80 miles away from Des Moines. yeah I can't remember what direction it is. but in the south South. Oh, okay, south. 80 miles south. Sure, sure.
00:06:15
Speaker
It was eroding out of the banks of a creek. And it took about 12 days to excavate this final part. And it was mostly the skull they were working on. 12 days for one skull. That's crazy. Oh, you see the pictures. Gigantic. Yeah, the pictures. Because the Facebook post, is it's an open page. So you don't have to like join it and just click on it. I don't think when I was reading the article, I realized that that was like just the skull. Oh, yeah. And you look at the tusks. Yeah. yeah though Yeah, I totally see it now. Gosh, they it's huge. And the people standing nearby are a great scale. So you can yeah see how freaking gigantic it is.
00:06:45
Speaker
yeah Yeah, they've already done some radiocarbon dating on this, and you'll find out why in a minute here. And it's come back at 13,600 years. so that's I love that time period. yeah Because that's like right in your Clovis time period. It's when the peopling of North America was beginning. so The weather was good. It was nice and cool. Well, I don't know if it was good, but it was getting better. You know, like like there was a George R. R. Martin wall, like right up there just north of Iowa. Oh my gosh. Yeah, basically, right? Yeah. So this is a really cool time period in North America. and And they're going to do, they haven't had a chance to do detailed analysis to see if there's, you know, any human activity on the bone, such as cut marks or whatever. But I'm sure they're definitely going to do that and see if they can find anything. Because yeah I mean, they're right in that timeframe where there could be could be some early North American human activity. Right. Interesting thing is, this is actually first discovered in 2022, and they have been actually pulling bones out of this thing ever since. oh okay It's just been a really slow process. i mean There's not a lot of funding involved. yeah The other interesting thing is, there has been no human-related artifacts found.
00:07:53
Speaker
Like this is, yeah we say that archeologists don't dig dinosaurs and that's actually true, but we will dig stuff we think humans may have touched. yeah And this isn't a dinosaur. It's not a
Mastodon Extinction and Climate Impact
00:08:02
Speaker
dinosaur. But humans have been well known, we'll talk about this in a bit, to have, you know, cavorted with mastodonts, right? So we think, hey, there could be human stuff here, so calling the archeologists, right? Like who else are you going to call? Right, right. so And it's like we said, it's the right timeframe. So it would be silly not to at least look for human activity, but the fact that there's no artifacts around it makes me think that like cut marks or anything like that, it's probably not gonna happen, but you never know. You never know until you look, right? Yeah, I mean, mastodonts. I mean, I guess they they can't just die of natural causes, or they could have been taken down by other animals, a saber-toothed tiger or something like that. so I don't know if they actually did that, come to think of it. But maybe a sick old mastodon. Oh, yeah. I mean, obviously, animals die, right? like They don't live forever. so And every once in a while, a natural death could could happen someplace where it'll preserve like this. Because you do need very special conditions to even have the bones preserved like this, right? like they did It didn't always happen. so yeah
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think in four years of RVing we've ever driven through Iowa, but... No, we have. Doesn't 80 go through Iowa? We've done 80 all the way across. Does 80 go through Iowa? We go through Ohio. a Yes, but in Chicago, and then it swoops kind of south southwest out of Chicago, I think. Maybe, I don't know, we'll see. but either way I could clear this up very easily by looking at a map, but not you know, I'm not going to do that right now. No, that's research beyond our means right now.
00:09:33
Speaker
but Anyway, yeah we don't don't like stop in Iowa. I was kind of a look at the corn. okay we're yeah Yeah, we haven't spent time there for sure. I used to hate going to, sorry, Iowans, but I used to hate going to Iowa. I had to drive north and south between North Dakota and like Oklahoma a couple of times when I was moving there yeah back along to over 20 years ago. And the crappy thing about Iowa, and I think it was I-29,
00:10:01
Speaker
At least I-29 when you got to North Dakota. I know it was all the way. yeah But Iowa dropped to 55 miles per hour on the interstate. I don't know if it still does. That's the worst. That's like getting crossing into Oregon and losing 10 miles per hour. yeah yeah So anyway, the remains will be at the Prairie Trails Museum in Corridon, Iowa. So so now let's have some mastodon facts. yes The mastodon lived right at the end of the Pleistocene when mastodons went extinct about 13,000 years ago. Now I pulled that fact from the the woman who wrote this article. yeah She wrote that down and that's not
00:10:40
Speaker
An accurate fact. Oh, it's not. No, it's an average fact. they On average, they went extinct about 13,000. What do you talk about an animal going extinct? Extinct is a final word. It is. And that's not real. Yeah. So let's just keep that in mind. okay Around 13,000 years ago, there were no more mastodons left. But there could have been some that lived longer. Well, we're about to find out. long Yeah, longer. There were definitely more that lived longer. Yeah, OK. So and life a lot longer. Yeah, probably in the northern areas where the climate was more Right. Conducive to the big old furry animals, right? Sure, sure. yeah They grew up to 10 feet tall and weighed as much as six tons, so that's a lot. They lived all across North America, from Alaska to Mexico, so they were very adaptable to many different environments.
00:11:23
Speaker
which you know Climate change is being attributed more and more to the megafauna die-off of the end of the Pleistocene. You know why we don't have all those? People are saying, oh, was it was it the humans that actually killed all these and and contributed to their extinction? I mean, I think, yes, humans in part humans probably did in part. yeah But as we learn more about climate change, they're saying, well, more and more climate change. But if you've got an animal that is adapted to the entire continent,
00:11:51
Speaker
and all the seasons the continent has to throw at it, including the end of the ice age, I'm like, OK. I mean, sure, Mexico lived through the Pleistocene, right? But Mexico didn't really have the kind of Pleistocene environment that North America did, right? That North, North, North America did, right? So if a Macedon can live down there and a Macedon can live in Alaska, you figure a Macedon can live through a climate change.
Preserved Mammoth DNA and Ethical Questions
00:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, you would think so. I'm just like, what the hell is going on here? It must have been humans. in part, but also like they have to eat, right? So that the ice age and the changing climate was affecting their resources. For sure. So that might've... I mean, it was a whole suite of things, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. But I don't know, I was just sad. So I just want them to be around. I want an alternate history where they didn't go extinct and they're just like walking around in the forest. I hope we can just like bring them back.
00:12:44
Speaker
So, yeah I mean, there are talks of that because up preserved in the in the northern Arctic regions of Scandinavia. Preserved in Amber? Not Amber, just preserved in the tundra. Not even joking, it's not Amber, Jurassic Park. But just preserved in the tundra, they've got potentially viable mammoth DNA. They've started trying to do that, extract it from various things that they found. It's just ethical reasons why.
00:13:10
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I don't know yeah know about doing that and what it could do to like the ecology of right places. yeah But anyway, like I said earlier, mastodons are not mammoths and mastodons are distant cousins of mammoths and elephant elephants. From what I understand, mammoths are closer to elephants than mastodons are, but they're all still very three three distinct um animals. So just some other important human mastodon sites. right let's Let's just name a few of them. Yeah, so the Manus Mastodon site is in Florida and from about 12,000 years ago. Not 13,000. Not 13,000, but that's far further south, right? So like kind of makes sense. Yeah. And they found mastodon bones there that had cut marks on them and also stone tools. So very clearly, you know, a human, I guess, kill site or attempts to kill site. I guess we don't. Right.
00:14:02
Speaker
I guess they killed it, probably. They got stuff, right? Cut marks and stone tools. At least they came up on the mastodon. They lopped off a leg or something, at least, right? Humans were probably very opportunistic back then, too. They probably were. Yeah, you can want a fresh mammoth kill. As soon as the saber-toothed tiger gets his fill, which they're going to eat pretty quick and be full, and then probably wander away. Anyway, the most famous one is probably Blackwater Draw in New Mexico.
00:14:29
Speaker
Clovis, New Mexico, which is the type site for the Clovis Point. That's where it gets its name. Oh, so it's from this Mastodon site? Yeah. The Clovis. Oh, okay. I didn't know that the Clovis were named in conjunction with also Mastodon bones. Yeah. This is 11,000 years ago, stone tools and projectile points. Yeah. So then there's the Kimbell site in Colorado. This one is 10,000 years ago. So even, even sooner. Yeah. And again, we have stone tools and spear points. So yeah. Do you want to do the last one?
00:14:57
Speaker
No, I don't want to do the last one. In fact, I'm not sure why that one's on the list. If I had read all of your notes, I would have seen that on the list and probably deleted it. Of course, we have serruti. We do not have serruti. 130,000 years. An ongoing argument. No, that did not happen. You even put hahaha in your nose. You just put that in there to make me get mad, didn't you? Okay, so for those who aren't familiar with the serruti site, it's garbage. Look it up. It's not real.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yes. That's that. Anyway. Chris disagrees. He likes to leave all doors open. The man will never shut a door. so I'm just saying. They're fossilized with mammoth bones. so And lots of pieces of rock around them with lots of pieces of rock that are were not touched by human people. Anyway, moving on from that. So anyway, the 13,000 years ago for extinction isn't quite right. Extinction was just the wrong word to use. yeah right They started to die off at the end of the Pleistocene for sure. There was probably a lot fewer of them. They began going extinct, but they weren't fully extinct. I don't know if we'll ever know exactly when they went extinct. How could you know when the last yeah the last version of an animal died? I mean, we might find a mast out on site that is to 9,000 years ago. Who knows? right yeah But it's just going to be more rare and more rare to find them. yeah And all we can say is, when was the last one we have conclusive data evidence to? We're going to put the extinction date there. And then you know if we find another one, now that's the extinction date. And now that's the extinction date. So it's just that's all you can do, really. yeah so
00:16:33
Speaker
anyway All right. so Well, on the other side of the break, let's find out exactly how they took these big guys down back in a minute.
Clovis Points and Early Human Hunting Techniques
00:16:43
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 276 of this mammoth of a show. Oh, it is a mammoth of a show, because we're we're definitely prattling on a little bit. But this stuff is fun to talk about. so yeah yeah and and i i like I like it when I can theme out a show, when we can find a theme. yeah I mean, the third article is a little bit of a stretch. It's a bit of a stretch, but that's all right. We'll get there.
00:17:08
Speaker
All right. So this next article is from earth dot.com. Although on my notes, it says urch dot.com. I'm not really sure what urch is. And link? I wonder where that goes. Don't open it. Don't do it. So earth.com, although it was reported in Newsweek and a bunch of other places. And also for the, the last one was just like Facebook, but for the next two articles, we actually have the original article linked as well. And they're both open source, which is really good. So you can actually go read them. This one is from a plus one article, I think, right? Yeah, it is. So this is regarding a new theory to explain how early humans not only sharpened Clovis points or used and used sharpened Clovis points, but how they the the actual techniques they use to hunt megafauna and take down animals like mastodons and mammoths. Yeah, because if you think about it, like
00:17:59
Speaker
Throwing a spear. Yeah, that just seems like it's not I don't know that's what they do in the movies, right? But like do they real did they really do that in real life was that was that a reliable way to bring down a mammoth People have often thought that yeah because I mean, clothes points, they're their they're tend they tend to be longer. yes They can be short. Yeah. They're wider, you know? Yeah. They're sharp on, they're they're very long and sharp. yeah You know, they can be longer, like I said, and sharp on both end both sides. so If you, you know, hit just right and they can, they're thin too, so they could like go between ribs yeah and things like that. But imagine the space between the ribs of a mastodon or like you could stick your fist in there probably. Yeah. But anyway, you you know, if you hit it hard enough, even with that thick hide and these sharp points and you've got the right, you've got the right sharpness on there, I mean, yeah, you probably could get in, but how deep is it going to go really? Yeah. And like, it's going to stop fast how many times do you have to hit the mastodon with a spear like this before you take it down? If you're just throwing it like that, right? I just have an image of a mastodon or a mammoth running around like a pin cushion with like 80 spear tips in it. Totally. And like,
00:19:07
Speaker
these beautiful clothes points, yeah they take so much time to make. And are you gonna stand there and throw it and just hope that this thing that you spent probably days creating doesn't crack in half because you hit a rib instead of getting it between the ribs or whatever. It just, so when you start thinking about the actual logistics of taking down a big animal by throwing sharp rocks at it, right like it just gets a little overwhelming. So what's cool about this article is that they have sort of a different idea on a different take on what they might've been doing.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yes. So the archaeologists in this research drew from various historical writings and artwork from around the world. So they were looking at other ways people around the world have taken down bigger animals and things like that and said, you know, what have people done and what has worked? yeah And instead of throwing spears or jabbing, they said, well, people seem to have braced these spears against the ground, maybe longer spears even, right? Brace them against the ground and just have the animal run itself into these spears. Whether somebody's scaring it from behind and causing a disturbance, I don't really know. They would have to do something like that, right? and causing it to run in the direction of a group of hunters or something who are probably the bravest people you've ever seen. I know, can you imagine? And that's where I get skeptical of this idea that you have like five hunters standing in a row bracing spears ready for this 10, what did we say? 10 foot tall? Yeah, 6'10". Yeah, like animal just charging you? Yeah.
00:20:38
Speaker
But the thing in its favor is that the in all his own force would drive the spirit deep inside the body, its body, creating a massive wound and it would be much more severe than just like our wimpy little human muscle arms could deliver. Yeah. We might be able to penetrate the hide, but it's not going to go very deep. Exactly. So it'll cause a lot more damage, but ah so much more dangerous, so much more terrifying. I just, I still have a little bit of skepticism just from that, but also yeah maybe because I'm, i would I would not be doing it. This would not be my job. but They call this hunting with planted spears. And I guess when you do that, the, the spear becomes less of a spear and more of a pike. They use that word in the, in the article a lot. Yeah.
00:21:21
Speaker
which makes me wonder, I'm sorry, I'm going off track right now. I didn't read your notes. I read the article, but not your notes. I don't know what direction you're wanting to take this, but wow. But could they have created a way to just like plant them in the ground without having to have a human standing there holding it and you know that to take the danger of the mammoth stamping towards you. I mean, they would have to have had pretty good construction techniques to be able to do that. But then, yeah you know, the mammoth is probably not going to angrily charge at a wooden structure, right? Or something like that. It's going to angrily charge a human. Yeah. You know, if you're, if you're agitating it. Right, right. Yeah. So, okay. That just popped in my head. I just wonder.
00:22:04
Speaker
So, they did, the researchers here at UC Berkeley, actually, led by Scott Byram from the Archaeological Research Facility, did experimental archaeology to study how Clovis points would react to the force of an approaching animal when using this technique. That's one thing they wanted to know. They're like, okay, so if he did this, what's a Clovis point going to do, right? Yeah, can the point handle it? What kind of damage would it do? All that kind of stuff.
00:22:26
Speaker
Experimental archaeology. I know, right? It's super fun. yeah And like I said, the articles open source and you can see a lot of their images yeah and and just like how they did it. So it's really neat. yeah Because obviously they weren't like practicing on elephants or anything. That would not be yeah that would not fly in any corner of the world. I don't think so. But wait till the end of the segment to find what they're doing next. Yeah, totally.
00:22:46
Speaker
Anyway, they found that using this technique made the spear tip behave like a hollow point bullet. It's just crazy. I know. And what a hollow point bullet does is it basically leaves kind of a small entrance wound, but then just like rips it out the other side. Now, I don't think their spear tips are going out the other side. Yeah. Depends on where it hits the animal because that would be a long, like a long shaft, but it could. Yeah. But it basically just goes in and then just wreaks havoc on the inside as it's going through. Just dragging through all the organs, the muscle, all of it. Yeah. Yeah, so it caused massive amount of damage in, you know, anything from mastodons, bison, saber-toothed cats, whatever you want to take down. I'm curious because I think one of the things that hollow point bullets do, my information all comes from true crime podcasts. So, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they like sort of break apart inside the body? And so that's why they do so much damage.
00:23:34
Speaker
I don't know if hollow points are designed to break apart. Maybe they do. I'm not really sure. They could shrapnel themselves and blow out the other side. Yeah. I'm wondering if that's what these spears did. They didn't really specify if the spear would actually break into pieces well it be that once it entered the the wooden shaft could, the point could as well. yeah I don't know if it was like intended to. It just takes me down this like archaeological path. I mean, well, if they'd find that these spears break into pieces when they enter their test material, then maybe they can start looking for spear points that are broken in a similar manner around these mastodon sites that we already have to sort of add evidence to what they're doing, archaeological evidence, not just experimental archaeology. So anyway.
00:24:15
Speaker
Well, that's one nice thing about like experimental archaeology is if you find out what's going on in your experimental archaeology, you can start looking for the evidence in the archaeological record. Yeah, like this over here, this site looks exactly like what we did with this experiment. that That's my favorite part. yeah That's so cool. One thing, if you're reading this article, and I don't know if they actually mentioned this in the paper, I didn't read the entire paper, but they mentioned this in the article and they may have just tried to find something to help explain some things, but they said that Clovis points first found in New Mexico, which that's where they were typed, not first found. I guess they were first found there, but they were made from rocks like Chert, Flint, or Jasper. Now, that's not strictly true. Yeah, and to anybody who's not a trained archaeologist, that those words sound fine, right? Yeah. they they They're all kind of the same thing. But they are. And if you look at the picture where those words are right above, the ones in the picture are actually obsidian entered. That first one is obsidian clearly. It looks like obsidian. It's black. If you zoom in on it, you can see the edges are translucent. It's 100% obsidian. So they use obsidian a lot in North America.
00:25:23
Speaker
Anyway, we just would like to ask journalists to use those words correctly and cautiously because Flint and Jasper are types of turt. All of these things are turt. So yeah, they're crystal crystalline silicates technically, which is a kind of quartz. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, but they're all just different names for.
00:25:41
Speaker
a sedimentary type of rock. like yeah Jasper is called Jasper when it's kind of orangy. Flint is Flint when it's kind of dark. I think there's a green one, a word for green ones. So anyway, yeah. So just take that phrase with a great assault. Yeah. Yeah. That's just journalism for you. I guess we can't really knock them too much for it. and Yeah, clothes points in general range in size from anywhere from the size about your thumb up to about five inches in length, have very sharp edges, and one of their defining characteristics is the fluted indentations on both sides. And by fluted, I mean there's one massive, what we call a flake scar, taken off of either side. And this was so you could, if you imagine ah a wooden shaft, and I've got my hands in a very compromising position right now, If you imagine a wooden shaft with a split down the middle of it, you would take this Clovis point and just basically jam it down that wooden shaft into the into the middle there. And the fluted indentation would just make that just kind of sit right in there. And then they would wrap a bunch of sinew and stuff around it.
00:26:39
Speaker
yeah to make it sit. And that actually, when they first found Clovis points, you know, a lot of the research for decades was trying to figure out how to even make that flute. And, and cause the power and force required from a flint napping standpoint, which is the flint napping is the science and, and technique of actually creating productive points and and stone tools. This is the technique of how to actually do that. People didn't know how to do. yeah They're like, how in the hell did they actually do this? And even now with like people who have figured it out, experts that have done expert flint nappers can do it. But I remember talking to our friend about it, who was a flint napper and he was saying that it's like, it's a 50 50 shot each time. Like it might work and create a beautiful flute or it might crack in half and you have to start all over. So cause here's the thing you make most of the point, yeah almost all the point. And that's like one of the last thing things yeah you could ruin the whole thing. So good luck. Imagine that's when the phrase, son of a bitch was first invented. right Oh gosh, to have all that work just like, but I bet they got fast at it though when they're doing these to survive and all the time they have to make these points. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Some of these have been found actually embedded and preserved in mammoth skeletons. So it's been pretty cool.
Neanderthal Hunting Strategies and Intelligence
00:27:52
Speaker
That's another thing that they could look at, right? If they really think this like plant and plant pike, what do they call it? The the pike planting methods, planted spears. If they think that that is a viable way that they killed mammoths and mastodons, and maybe they can look at where these Clovis points are embedded in the preserved skeletons that we have. Cause if they're on the top of the mammoth, then maybe not so much. That would have come from lobbing it from somewhere far away, right? But if they're up underneath the mammoth,
00:28:22
Speaker
yeah which is kind of where you'd have to aim anyway, even if you were throwing it. But if they're up, I bet angles and up underneath, they might be able to tell if they were planted as opposed to grown. Good observation, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking to your point earlier about how they would have maybe actually planted these spears. Byron's team feels that the Clovis Point and Spear were just part of a larger hunting system and many of the elements of that system would not have survived the ravages of time. Missing majority. Exactly. yeah um So some of the things that either maybe missing or misinterpreted would have been bone shafts, so other elements of the spear shaft itself. um Wooden spear bases, so something to actually plant the spear in. Oh yeah, because just their hands holding it to the ground probably wouldn't be enough, right? Might not be, yeah. Bindings made of pine pitch and lacing, because a lot of times you don't even most of the time you don't even find the spear itself. right right You just find the point. yeah That's it. That's it. yeah Anyway, take a look at the linked article and the experimental techniques they use. The article I actually linked to but actually does a really good job about going a lot more into the experimental archaeology at the end there. I just wanted to kind of overview it here on what they did, but they do a lot more and they have some pictures. And then again, they link directly to the experimental archeology article on plus one. So you can take a look at that as well. Yeah. There's some really great photos there and just to see how they were doing this. Cause it is really neat. Cause obviously they're, they're creating animal like
00:29:47
Speaker
objects to test on because you can't test this on real animals obviously. so yeah And one of our hosts on the archaeology podcast network is actually a professor at UC Berkeley in the anthropology department. And I want to see... Oh, we're going to get them on the show at some point for an interview too. And I want to see if maybe he can hook us up with an interview with Scott Barram because one of the things that they plan to do here is as their next step is to construct a replica mammoth, which I want to see, especially if they're going to do it on like the streets of Berkeley. I don't really know where they're going to do this.
00:30:20
Speaker
to continue their testing because they want to test it. Cause that's the other thing they said. They want to test this spear with like a full charging mammoth. So my, what I want to see is I want to see a full weighted sized mammoth on like wheels with grad students pushing it and like other grad students sitting there with spears, like with this mammoth. I don't think grad students could push it fast enough. They need it to be on like a, ah I don't think they moved that fast. They're mammoths.
00:30:46
Speaker
I don't know. I bet they did. I mean, they probably moved at a pretty good clip, don't get me wrong. But I don't think they moved faster than, say, grad students can push a mammoth. Or maybe they'll have to put it on a car, like push it behind with a car. Maybe. They need to get mythbusters involved. I just need to see it. I need to see it. So I need to actually see this. Yeah. Yeah, I might have to fly to California. This experimental archaeology sounds really amazing though. And they're doing such cool work on something that we'll honestly never know the actual answer to probably. But it is really great to have other options because the idea of a person standing there throwing a spear towards a mammoth when you really think about it kind of doesn't make sense. So having a more organized idea behind how they did it is really cool. So I love this work.
00:31:34
Speaker
All right, well on the other side of the break, we're going to find out that Neanderthals weren't that stupid after all. Back in a minute. Welcome back to the third and final segment of episode 276, Big Animals and the humans that love to eat them.
00:31:51
Speaker
So this is kind of the opposite of that maybe a little bit, but that's okay. Right. So I found this article first and I was i was really trying to hunt for another big animals yeah type article and I really couldn't find one. right And I saw this one about Neanderthals and I clicked into it because Neanderthals famously did hunt big animals. yeah So I clicked into it and I got a little bit lucky in that big animals were mentioned.
00:32:14
Speaker
But it really wasn't about big animals. wasn't but that weird gay Weird thing is, and I don't think we've ever reported on an article from here, but I found it was from Men's Journal. And I'm like, come on, Men's Journal. What are you doing? Stay in your lane. But anyway, they, ah to their credit, linked to the Science Direct article, which I also link to. gotcha yeah Which is open source. And I did not find this article, you did. And I read the title and I was like, new archeological discoveries challenge widely held beliefs about Neanderthals. And in my brain, I was like, where have I heard that before? I've heard that before. That sounds familiar. yeah Like, oh wait, every article that has come out about Neanderthals in the last like year or two has had some version of that headline because it's like the thing right now for researchers is to find out that Neanderthals weren't as stupid. They weren't as
00:33:03
Speaker
They just weren't as cave manny. They weren't as. they They just weren't as, as we thought. So it's another another version of that. Weren't as cave manny. I'm going to put that on a t-shirt. Maybe that should be the title of this episode. I want that on my head, son. Wasn't as cave manny. Maybe I am. Anyway, so a dig in Spain at Aberg Pizarro.
00:33:28
Speaker
with researchers from the Australian National University found hundreds of thousands of artifacts that challenge this assumption that we're talking about here. Yeah. Abark Pizarro, just to place it in space here, is in the southern Pyrenees of Spain, where there are many caves and rock structures where many Neanderthal remains have been found before. So lots of Neanderthals lived in this area, of France, Spain, the whole like area. Yes. The Neanderthals were all over it. That's where all the big news about Neanderthals comes from, it seems like. Yeah, the site itself dates from about 100,000 to 65,000 years ago. Did they say how they're dating the site? and No, they really get into it, and then I didn't read the article. It wasn't really the kind of the point of the article. It's just an established date, basically. yeah yeah Some of the artifacts discovered included stone tools and animal bones, but like I said, many, many, many, many artifacts. yeah But the ones that are really important to this article really are just the stone tools and the animal bones found because of the types of stone tools and the types of animal bones found.
00:34:25
Speaker
So like you said, it's a long-held belief that Neanderthals were poor hunters and weren't that smart. So they're looking for the big animals that might be a little slower. Getting lucky with a good shot at a big animal and like that would hold them over for a while till they had to go try their luck again. yeah I think that's sort of the perception in the past. Yeah, getting getting a few of the guys together and trying to bison into the cave. You've got to bison in one hand and your lady's hair in the other hand and you're dragging them both into the cave.
00:34:54
Speaker
Oh my God, none of that is true. i know Well, i mean I guess it probably could have been true, but it wasn't the only thing they were doing. The tools and the bones indicated that the Neanderthals were able to quickly adapt to changing environments and create weapons for hunting specific animals. And yeah the way that this really did this was because the animal bones displayed cut marks, right? So it indicated that the animals just didn't want it in their die. The animals were being processed by Neanderthals, right? And the animals they found, so some of the bigger ones that we know that Neanderthals ate, when we have good evidence of, red deer, horses, bison, those are some of the big ones. yeah I mean, there is evidence, of course, that they took down much bigger animals, mammoths, mastodons, things like that.
00:35:38
Speaker
And that's, that's well established, but they also found freshwater turtles, rabbits, and they found the projectile points to match. Yeah. So smaller ones, bigger ones. And they're like, Oh, so these guys just like knew how to make all kinds of tools. Yeah. And, and all these, my question for this article though is how is this the first time we're seeing this? Why is this new information? I mean, they must've found smaller tools before. What did they think they were doing with them? I don't really know. That is crazy to me. It doesn't really go into it here. There's been a lot of Neanderthal sites and it is really interesting to me how this is the first time that small animal bones with cut marks and small projectile points have been found in association also with Neanderthals and also with large animal bones with cut marks and large projectile points.
00:36:23
Speaker
I suppose having all of that together in one site is probably pretty unique, but you feel it feels like you should have had some components of that in other places. And maybe it just wasn't enough to put the full picture together and then the site has the full picture, but but it is surprising for sure. yeah And I mean, obviously like,
00:36:39
Speaker
They have to eat and you can't always get a big deer or a bison or whatever. So it makes sense that they would figure out how to hunt the smaller rabbits. The turtles would be really easy because they don't even move that fast. yeah You know, like you don't even need ah a tool to take down a turtle. I can take down a turtle and divide.
00:36:59
Speaker
That that's fine. I'm a lot bigger. I could figure it out if I had to right and it's getting into the turtle Maybe that would be the problem and they needed tools for that right so yeah It seems a lot. It just seems logical to me Neanderthals weren't that dumb they figured it out, right? You know something about turtles? What? And I don't know if they would have hit upon this or not because they wouldn't have needed to necessarily. And these were freshwater turtles, very different than the turtles I'm about to talk about. But I'm listening to the e-book In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel
00:37:32
Speaker
I can't remember who it is, but it's about the whaling ship Essex, which is a very famous ship that went down. and it was You were inspired by New Bedford, weren't you? I was indeed. And I'm pretty sure I've read it before. I just didn't remember it. yeah But I was listening to it while we drive and stuff like that. And the takedown of the whaling ship Essex by this huge sperm whale with a vendetta is the inspiration for Moby Dick. and But this book starts where that takedown happens. And it's really the story of the the the crew that, you know, crewed the ship, but it's the story of after the ship basically gets hit by this whale and their story of getting home and and the the horribleness that happened after that. But the point is, so leading up to that point, they hit the Galapagos and some other places around there to kind of re reprovision. One of the things that the whaling ships did, they would take on
00:38:24
Speaker
I mean, literally a thousand turtles onto the ship. Really? A thousand, like big huge turtles. They would strap a live turtle to their back because you can only carry one because they were really heavy and really big. And these leatherback turtles, right? That some of them that have lived for a hundred plus years, right? They didn't know that. They didn't care. Well, there were lore of turtles being around for a long time, but they would strap these things and take them on, because guess what? A turtle, it turns out, could live on one of these ships without food or water for up to a year. How? That's crazy. Yeah, and there was talk of, oh, we're pretty sure it doesn't suffer until it's killed, right? And other people were like, hmm. Oh my God. That's insane. Yeah. So I wonder if, you know, early, early humans and Neanderthals that did eat turtles would find out that they were, they were a good kind of food to just shove over in the corner and you didn't really have to maintain it and it just never died. Yeah. You know, and it just was like always there until you needed it. You know what I mean? I wonder when people hit on that fact.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah, that know that is an interesting question, because we know humans have eaten turtles oh yeah for a really long
Turtle Hunting and Historical Preservation
00:39:36
Speaker
time. For a long time. We found turtle shell in Miami when we were excavating there. For thousands of years ago. yeah so Yeah, so turtles are a very good source of food. But yeah, I never thought about the fact that you could just like create a little cage for them, basically, and they would just live there. And again, these were the big leatherback turtles yeah that were saltwater turtles. yeah And I don't know if these little freshwater turtles had the same attributes. yeah I really don't know. I don't know.
00:40:00
Speaker
But it's just crazy to me that they said they could live up to a year. They were just wandering around the ship. That is crazy. But they would lick everything too. They probably found stuff to eat and they just didn't realize it. I don't know. There was nothing to eat on that ship. But then again, the whole ship, when they were processing a whale, was just full of gross whale oil and blubber and all that kind of stuff. It sounds awful. And there's turtles just wandering around everywhere because they didn't pen them up. They were just everywhere.
00:40:28
Speaker
Butcher went up and they needed to eat one. Yeah. Yeah. So it's pretty. You know what? If I were to go back in time, going onto a ship of any sort is not on my list. Everything we learned when we were in Massachusetts, no, I'm not interested in any early shipping activity. You better like a sandwich made of hard tack, salted meats and turtle. No, I don't like small places. I don't want to be, no. You know the weird thing is it sounds like they didn't do a whole lot of fishing, except for whales. I guess fishing rods and fishing lines hadn't so much been invented yet, maybe? Well, I mean, prehistoric people have been fishing forever. Yeah, but not the kind that you could use for deep sea fishing, like with the big fish, right? I mean, Alaskans would argue with that. Yeah, they would. That's true. Pacific Northwesterners would argue with that. Yeah. I don't know.
00:41:19
Speaker
No thanks, all of that. Okay, well that that went tangent-y real quick, but... The point is, people are adaptable. Yes. And if you want food... And so are Neanderthals. You'll find it, and so are Neanderthals. Neanderthals were much closer to people than we've previously thought, and the news just keeps coming that confirms that. They acted more like you know early humans did. Right. And we interpret with them, and there's just... Neanderthals are just... They're not the cavemen that we thought they were. and you know I think we need we need a new driver of evolution. We have natural selection, which is which is basically genetics. It really is just genetics. yeah It's it's gene genetic drift and things like that. right We have sexual selection. You know, which is basically... Choosing. which It's choosing. Choosing your partner. It's choosing your partner and saying, oh, I like the person with those traits and I'm not going to mate with this guy, I'm going to mate with this guy or girl or whatever, right? And and that's sexual selection. yeah I think we have hunger selection.
00:42:22
Speaker
Right? like we have we have people who are and Maybe this is an evolutionary trait. I'm not saying that. But it's a it's a it's a developmental trait. right Hunger selection is driving technology. right hunger Hunger intuition. Definitely. Yeah. It's like, I'm hungry. I'm going to figure something the hell out, and I'm going to figure it out.
00:42:42
Speaker
I think you see it in like a survivalist story, right? Like half the time when somebody's dropped on a desert island for whatever reason, they figure out how to do it in and they survive or they don't, right? And the ones that don't pass on that information. Yeah, so it is a version of selection, you know? what I mean, I think it still falls into a natural selection maybe, but sure, we can call it hunger selection. I don't know if it falls into natural selection. I think the people that that figure out how to survive by saying, look, I made this smaller tool that'll take down a rabbit, yeah or you know I invented the bow and arrow. you know I invented this. I did that. I figured out how to cook this thing, or I figured out how to eat this thing that's not going to make us die. They pass on that information, and now their descendants live longer. So that really is a form of selection. It is a form of selection. You know, it's not sexual, it's not natural. yeah It's just, it's a form of selection. yeah totally So anyway, it's hunger selection. I'm gonna fix my hunger selection right now. I think you need to go get a PhD. You just found your topic. Good luck with that.
00:43:41
Speaker
Pretty hungry dude. Is that gonna be your handle? Pretty hungry dude.
Podcast Conclusion and Credits
00:43:50
Speaker
Oh man. Alright. Okay, you're ridiculous. Time for a cheeseburger. I think it is. Alright. Bye. Bye!
00:44:04
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment in and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening and have an awesome day.
00:44:27
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.