Humans Throwing Stuff

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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,

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 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 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

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 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 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, 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, 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. 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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, 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, 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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, 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

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, 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

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, 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 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

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, 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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.

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.

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

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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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

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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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

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, 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 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 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, 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 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.

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

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, 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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,

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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

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, 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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.

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, 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, 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

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, 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 episodes publishing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday's we do a listener mail, and that's that's what you can write

in discuss some of the mail that comes in. On Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a strange film on Weird House Cinema huch thanks to our audio producer J. J. Pauseway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, to share something interesting, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at

stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart radios, the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows. Four