I was searching the name Richard Rutledge - he's an anthropologist - and
found this interesting tidbit.
http://web.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/n-s/stone3.html
A more recent archaeological find in a lignite mine at Schöningen,
about 60 miles east of Hanover, is almost as sensational. Three wooden
spears found alongside stone tools and animal bones have been dated as
400,000 years old, yet they are as precisely weighted as modern javelins.
The oldest hunting weapons ever found, each was carved from a single trunk
of spruce about 2m (6ft) long and has a broad, pointed tip, made from the
densest, heaviest part of the wood, and a tapering tail end. Many experts
had previously believed that the Neanderthals didn't have the ability to
plan a hunt and probably scavenged carcasses. The spears show that not
only did the Neanderthals have weapons for killing, they also had an
understanding of aerodynamics.
The theory that no interbreeding occurred between Neanderthals and Homo
sapiens was turned on its head by a discovery in 1998 of a 24,500-year-old
skeleton of a child at Lagar Velho in the Lapedo Valley north of Lisbon,
Portugal. The skeleton has some Neanderthal characteristics – short legs,
with particularly short tibias (lower leg bones), a stocky body and some
teeth typical of the Neanderthals – but the chin and pelvis of modern
humans. Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the child had lived 4,000 years
after the time when Neanderthals and modern humans co-existed on the
Iberian peninsula. Thus this small skeleton of a four-year-old, given a
ritual burial with a pierced shell and red ochre, is conclusive proof that
interbreeding took place.
BTW the densest, heaviest part of the wood (and hardest) is at the bottom,
where the roots leave the trunk.
William
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