Re: Persistent predators at Schoningen

  Mario Petrinovic wrote:

         Wild boars are the most dangerous animals. Once, a German natural researcher made a documentary about who is the most fearsome animal in Indian jungle. Tiger takes third spot. A pack of wild dogs takes the catch from tiger, because they are a bunch. So, wild dogs are the second. But wild boars are a bunch with formidable tusks, they scare a pack of dogs away, so they are the first.

A sword or spear for boar hunting would typically have a cross bar to
keep any animal you stabbed from running up the shaft & mauling you.
Wild Boars are extremely aggressive even TODAY, but they would have been
far more so back before they were constantly breeding with feral pigs.

         Here we are talking about Neanderthals. Neanderthals didn't throw spears, they thrust spears.

I think the belief is that we're speaking of Heidelberg Man here, and
the spears are described as throwing spears.
According to the latest dating these are even close to the earliest
examples. These really may have been invented for spear fishing, the
adaptation being their use for terrestrial hunting.
That's just speculation as is nearly everything, only I am aware of
this fact while the dogmatists seem to think they hold established
fact.
Anyway, the dynamics of traveling through water & air are the same,
so spears like this may have been invented for spear fishing.
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