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This never seemed quite believable to me. Outside of some pretty narrow circumstances, hunting (presumably small game) by chucking stones seems like a very har

This never seemed quite believable to me. Outside of some pretty narrow circumstances, hunting (presumably small game) by chucking stones seems like a very hard way to make a living. It's easier for me to imagine a club being or non throwing stick/spear being a game changer than rock throwing. There are living traditions of so many kinds of human hunting methods. Rock throwing is not in the top 1000. OTOH, there are many hunting/fishing methods that require nothing but bare hands and knowhow. If throwing rocks is such a breakthrough, why does no one do it anymore? Meanwhile, the few hunting methods and/or tools that chimps use are represented in extant human hunting behaviour. Also fighting. I've never seen involved in a paleohuman duel but if I had to, I think I'd choose the hitting stick over a rock. The david vs goliath approach doesn't leave much room for error... and David had a sling. I mean, the technical parts details of this theory is interesting. Explosive movement abilities developing in the Erectus lineage. I just think the rock throwing seems off.

hntrader 6y ago
Rock throwing is a traditional hunting technique used by Aboriginal Australians. Think about the scale economies. You have a tribe of 10 individuals all throwing rocks at a single being without having to close distance and risk injury. It also appears to me to be a simpler invention for evolution than club usage and therefore more likely as an intermediate step, requiring less cortex. Accuracy and dexterity are no so important, just bipedalism and law of large numbers - after N rocks are thrown all you need is one of two connections. This is all rather speculative, though, and I'm mostly talking out of my arse :-)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fiftyfifty 6y ago
Taken by itself the evolution of the human thumb may not be convincing, but along with other evidence, such as the changes around the human shoulder joint at around the same time period provides strong evidence that the ability to throw was a major factor in human evolution: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23061016#:~:text=Early%20humans%20evolved%20to%20throw,allowed%20this%20ability%20to%20develop.&text=Researchers%20tell%20the%20journal%20Nature,and%20migrate%20around%20the%20globe https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23061016#:~:tex....
- dalbasal 6y ago
  Is this all really throwing specific? Don't punching, hammering or other biomechanic also benefit from this? I'm not arguing the anatomy, just the "rock throwing" part. I mean, throwing a rock might come in handy from time to time.. but it seems insufficient to be a driving force.. to me. Spears maybe.. We even have evidence of neanderthal spear making... but that's 1.5m years later. You can make a living with a spear. Feeding a family by hunting birds with rocks seems near impossible. Seems like much less of a game changer than clubs, spears, digging sticks, etc. I can imagine a population dependent enough on these to create evolutionary pressures. This is not an educated opinion... just a layman's speculation. Meanwhile, I also suspect that hunting plays a bigger role than currently fashionable. Chimps are basically bound to live where figs grow. They need a variety of fig trees, because different varieties fruit at different times. No figs, no chimps. Their diet defines their range. Most modern foraging cultures rely heavily on food plants that require processing: cooking, soaking, pounding, grinding.... We're not very good at digesting plants. Even chimps aren't great at it. Assuming earlier ancestors were chimp-like, I think they had to have widened their diets beyond fruit... That means either meat or harder to digest vegetables. Paranthropus (a divergent family of human-like species) do seem adapted to a wider vegetable diet. Their skull was crested, like a gorilla, to facilitate gnawing on uncooked roots, leaves & such. Homo & Australopithecines don't have such features. It just doesn't seem as likely that we evolved the ability to eat a wider vegetable range than chimps, and then regressed to a narrower range again. The invention of fire is often referred to as "an external digestive system." You don't really need this for meat. Fresh meat is digestible. Even chimps can eat fresh meat, and we're more carnivorous than chimps. I think cooking, and other processing methods reintroduced us to vegetarian diets. It's actually really surprising that we don't know what these early species ate. For most animals, diet defines lifestyle. A species that hunts or scavenges for most of its diet is subject to totally different pressures than a fig eater.
bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
I assumed that rocks were for throwing at other people (your enemies), not potential prey
- Rumudiez 6y ago
  “Stoning” as punishment and a means of (slow, painful) execution seems consistent with this
rstuart4133 6y ago
I don't. I can't find it now, but long ago I came across a description of a British captain and his crew landed on an island, and was confronted with the natives. The natives on had rocks, which they threw at them. They had the usual muskets and swords. He described the rocks as huge, accurately thrown, and a never ending deluge. While you were ducking one, another hit you from another direction. He reported they broke arms and skulls. Had he been able to put more distance between himself and the rock throwers, so a musket could reach but a rock couldn't the outcome might have been different I guess, but they had just landed on a beach. Rocks were the first distance effect weapons. The answer to "why doesn't anybody do it any more" is simply we have even better distance effect weapons now. Apes throw sticks now (not as effective as rocks), then we move onto rocks, and then slingshots, spears, then bows and arrows, and on we go. If you came from Australia, you would know of a Test cricket batsman (ie, one of the best at the game in the world in a world that has over a billion following it), who misjudged a cricket ball (made of leather and stuffing, not rock), bowled at him (ie hand thrown) that was bounced of the ground (direct throws aren't legal), it smashed through the best helmets we had to offer and killed him. https://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/30219440 https://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/30219440 He never regained consciousness. It wasn't some unfortunate stroke caused by some undetected aneurysm. It tore open an artery in his neck.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  Technology is rarely usurped entirely. I definitely agree that rock throwing in fights still exists, and people will do it when necessary. It's not, however, a primary method of warfare or 1-on-1 conflict... outside of specific circumstances like defending walls. Maybe a situation where one side has armour and swords and the other has numbers. Even then, long term, I'd wager on the the former. Hunting methods tend to perpetuate. I'm not saying that no one ever hunts birds with rocks. I'm sure many people do. I'm equally sure that very few ever fill the pot this way. For rock throwing to have shaped our arms from Habilis to Erectus, A just want to say that I'm not arguing against any core parts of the theory. Hand/thumb articulation. Shoulder biomechanics. Explosive/elastic ability. There's plenty of evidence for that. There are also plenty of alternative ways to theorize how this was useful. I think rock throwing is the popular explanation because it assumes the least behavioural complexity. It could have been more complex behaviour, like spear throwing. We only have evidence of stone tools because composition. But, I think it's safe to assume that this represents a very small part of the Erectus (even habilis) tool repertoire. If I had to accept rock throwing, my theory would be "alpha scavenger" behaviour, like brown bears. Rock throwing is be pretty useful for chasing large predators off their kill. This is an extant "hunting" method, stealing from lions. Cultures that still do this (now for cultural, more than nutritional reasons) use nothing but bravery. They walk in, projecting confidence. Lions retreat, at least temporarily. The people cut off a haunch and walk away. A crude stone knife/axe (the one tool we know was widely used) is an essential tool for this. You need to butcher super fast, before the lions regroup and try to recover the kill. That'd be an evolutionary advantage. Lions & bears do this, but it takes a lot of body mass. If a band of 50kg animals can chase off a pride of 150kg animals or a single 250kg animal... this is very efficient. Usually being alpha scavenger requires a tradeoff: large, calories consumptive body size in exchange for access to calories. Hard way to make a living, but at least plausible.

hntrader 6y ago

Rock throwing is a traditional hunting technique used by Aboriginal Australians. Think about the scale economies. You have a tribe of 10 individuals all throwing rocks at a single being without having to close distance and risk injury. It also appears to me to be a simpler invention for evolution than club usage and therefore more likely as an intermediate step, requiring less cortex. Accuracy and dexterity are no so important, just bipedalism and law of large numbers - after N rocks are thrown all you need is one of two connections. This is all rather speculative, though, and I'm mostly talking out of my arse :-)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

fiftyfifty 6y ago

Taken by itself the evolution of the human thumb may not be convincing, but along with other evidence, such as the changes around the human shoulder joint at around the same time period provides strong evidence that the ability to throw was a major factor in human evolution: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23061016#:~:text=Early%20humans%20evolved%20to%20throw,allowed%20this%20ability%20to%20develop.&text=Researchers%20tell%20the%20journal%20Nature,and%20migrate%20around%20the%20globe https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23061016#:~:tex....

dalbasal 6y ago
Is this all really throwing specific? Don't punching, hammering or other biomechanic also benefit from this? I'm not arguing the anatomy, just the "rock throwing" part. I mean, throwing a rock might come in handy from time to time.. but it seems insufficient to be a driving force.. to me. Spears maybe.. We even have evidence of neanderthal spear making... but that's 1.5m years later. You can make a living with a spear. Feeding a family by hunting birds with rocks seems near impossible. Seems like much less of a game changer than clubs, spears, digging sticks, etc. I can imagine a population dependent enough on these to create evolutionary pressures. This is not an educated opinion... just a layman's speculation. Meanwhile, I also suspect that hunting plays a bigger role than currently fashionable. Chimps are basically bound to live where figs grow. They need a variety of fig trees, because different varieties fruit at different times. No figs, no chimps. Their diet defines their range. Most modern foraging cultures rely heavily on food plants that require processing: cooking, soaking, pounding, grinding.... We're not very good at digesting plants. Even chimps aren't great at it. Assuming earlier ancestors were chimp-like, I think they had to have widened their diets beyond fruit... That means either meat or harder to digest vegetables. Paranthropus (a divergent family of human-like species) do seem adapted to a wider vegetable diet. Their skull was crested, like a gorilla, to facilitate gnawing on uncooked roots, leaves & such. Homo & Australopithecines don't have such features. It just doesn't seem as likely that we evolved the ability to eat a wider vegetable range than chimps, and then regressed to a narrower range again. The invention of fire is often referred to as "an external digestive system." You don't really need this for meat. Fresh meat is digestible. Even chimps can eat fresh meat, and we're more carnivorous than chimps. I think cooking, and other processing methods reintroduced us to vegetarian diets. It's actually really surprising that we don't know what these early species ate. For most animals, diet defines lifestyle. A species that hunts or scavenges for most of its diet is subject to totally different pressures than a fig eater.

bobbylarrybobby 6y ago

I assumed that rocks were for throwing at other people (your enemies), not potential prey

Rumudiez 6y ago
“Stoning” as punishment and a means of (slow, painful) execution seems consistent with this

rstuart4133 6y ago

I don't. I can't find it now, but long ago I came across a description of a British captain and his crew landed on an island, and was confronted with the natives. The natives on had rocks, which they threw at them. They had the usual muskets and swords. He described the rocks as huge, accurately thrown, and a never ending deluge. While you were ducking one, another hit you from another direction. He reported they broke arms and skulls. Had he been able to put more distance between himself and the rock throwers, so a musket could reach but a rock couldn't the outcome might have been different I guess, but they had just landed on a beach. Rocks were the first distance effect weapons. The answer to "why doesn't anybody do it any more" is simply we have even better distance effect weapons now. Apes throw sticks now (not as effective as rocks), then we move onto rocks, and then slingshots, spears, then bows and arrows, and on we go. If you came from Australia, you would know of a Test cricket batsman (ie, one of the best at the game in the world in a world that has over a billion following it), who misjudged a cricket ball (made of leather and stuffing, not rock), bowled at him (ie hand thrown) that was bounced of the ground (direct throws aren't legal), it smashed through the best helmets we had to offer and killed him. https://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/30219440 https://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/30219440 He never regained consciousness. It wasn't some unfortunate stroke caused by some undetected aneurysm. It tore open an artery in his neck.

dalbasal 6y ago
Technology is rarely usurped entirely. I definitely agree that rock throwing in fights still exists, and people will do it when necessary. It's not, however, a primary method of warfare or 1-on-1 conflict... outside of specific circumstances like defending walls. Maybe a situation where one side has armour and swords and the other has numbers. Even then, long term, I'd wager on the the former. Hunting methods tend to perpetuate. I'm not saying that no one ever hunts birds with rocks. I'm sure many people do. I'm equally sure that very few ever fill the pot this way. For rock throwing to have shaped our arms from Habilis to Erectus, A just want to say that I'm not arguing against any core parts of the theory. Hand/thumb articulation. Shoulder biomechanics. Explosive/elastic ability. There's plenty of evidence for that. There are also plenty of alternative ways to theorize how this was useful. I think rock throwing is the popular explanation because it assumes the least behavioural complexity. It could have been more complex behaviour, like spear throwing. We only have evidence of stone tools because composition. But, I think it's safe to assume that this represents a very small part of the Erectus (even habilis) tool repertoire. If I had to accept rock throwing, my theory would be "alpha scavenger" behaviour, like brown bears. Rock throwing is be pretty useful for chasing large predators off their kill. This is an extant "hunting" method, stealing from lions. Cultures that still do this (now for cultural, more than nutritional reasons) use nothing but bravery. They walk in, projecting confidence. Lions retreat, at least temporarily. The people cut off a haunch and walk away. A crude stone knife/axe (the one tool we know was widely used) is an essential tool for this. You need to butcher super fast, before the lions regroup and try to recover the kill. That'd be an evolutionary advantage. Lions & bears do this, but it takes a lot of body mass. If a band of 50kg animals can chase off a pride of 150kg animals or a single 250kg animal... this is very efficient. Usually being alpha scavenger requires a tradeoff: large, calories consumptive body size in exchange for access to calories. Hard way to make a living, but at least plausible.