Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part four of our series on throwing behavior. Now,
Speaker 1: in previous parts we focused mainly on non human animals.
Speaker 1: We've looked at alleged throwing behaviors and octopuses in uh in,
Speaker 1: elephants in the mongoose. We definitely had a digression about
Speaker 1: dogs with air Bud in the previous episode. But also
Speaker 1: in the previous episode, we ended up talking about the
Speaker 1: evolution of the human capacity for throwing, which we are
Speaker 1: particularly apt at. Humans are are very good at throwing,
Speaker 1: especially compared to our nearest primate relatives. So like a
Speaker 1: chimpanzee maybe on average three or four times stronger than
Speaker 1: a human. But a human, even without specialized training, can
Speaker 1: generally throw a lot more forcefully and a lot better
Speaker 1: than a chimpanzee can. So why are we so specialized
Speaker 1: for throwing? Well, we took a look at some some
Speaker 1: evolutionary hypotheses about where our capacity for throwing comes from.
Speaker 1: But there was another thing that I came across while
Speaker 1: researching this subject that I did not get into in
Speaker 1: the previous episode, and I wanted to come back to
Speaker 1: it here because I found it really interesting. And this
Speaker 1: is the idea of what if the evolution of throwing
Speaker 1: was somehow a necessary precursor for the evolution of probably
Speaker 1: the most distinctly human trait language. Mm hmmm, So not
Speaker 1: just that humans are good at throwing and good at language,
Speaker 1: but that there is actually a a neurobiological link between
Speaker 1: the two one comes from the other. Uh So, to
Speaker 1: look at this question, I wanted to refer to a
Speaker 1: paper by William D. Hopkins, Jamie L. Russell, and Jennifer A.
Speaker 1: Schafer published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society b
Speaker 1: Biological Sciences published in twenty called the Neural and Cognitive
Speaker 1: Correlates of Aimed Throwing in Chimpanzees, a magnetic residence, image
Speaker 1: and behavioral study on a unique form of social tool use.
Speaker 1: So um, to begin, they cover some of the same
Speaker 1: ground we did in the previous episode. Uh. You know
Speaker 1: how unusual human throwing behavior is in a way, and
Speaker 1: despite all the interesting examples we've discussed in these episodes
Speaker 1: of animals throwing things for various reasons, whether trained by
Speaker 1: humans or just doing it as part of their natural
Speaker 1: instinctual behaviors. UM. The authors here argued that in general,
Speaker 1: throwing remains unsystematic in their words and other animals, and
Speaker 1: I think this is fair. No other animal practices the
Speaker 1: kind of generalized, skillful habitual throwing that we do, certainly
Speaker 1: not without training by humans. Yeah, as we're discussing, the
Speaker 1: previous episode goes way back in human behavior, and it's
Speaker 1: something that even today, with all our other tools and
Speaker 1: ways of doing things at a distance, we still engage
Speaker 1: in throwing. We we I think in the very first episode,
Speaker 1: we discussed that sort of um, at least in my case, uh,
Speaker 1: the strange pull to need to throw a ball with
Speaker 1: my son when he was younger, uh, even though we
Speaker 1: were not a baseball or softball family. But it was
Speaker 1: just kind of this thing that I guess was like
Speaker 1: nostalgic and the culture, but also very satisfying to do
Speaker 1: and something that even if you're not very practiced at
Speaker 1: you can do with some or at least I found
Speaker 1: that I could do with some degree of precision. Um,
Speaker 1: despite being very rusty at the whole softball baseball thing.
Speaker 1: I totally sympathize with you there. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: neither of us are really sports guys. I don't really
Speaker 1: want rules, I don't really want teams, but I do
Speaker 1: want ball m or frisbee. Frisbee just as good in
Speaker 1: my opinion. Yeah, and I mean there's also there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot more throwing that goes on into like how
Speaker 1: often do we find ourselves across the room from someone,
Speaker 1: We request something and they give it a toss, they
Speaker 1: throw it to us, and you want to be able
Speaker 1: to catch it for various reasons. And then that's without
Speaker 1: even getting into the various sports that even if we
Speaker 1: don't engage in, we may watch, and the throwing of
Speaker 1: balls is often an essential part, or at least one
Speaker 1: aspect of a given sport. Right. But of course, apart
Speaker 1: from these recreational concerns, you know, throwing has been crucial
Speaker 1: to the survival of our ancestors. That seems pretty clear.
Speaker 1: And in the last episode we talked about arguments from
Speaker 1: evolutionary anthropology that throwing was positively selected for in human ancestors,
Speaker 1: and the bodies of hominin species like Homo erectus show
Speaker 1: anatomical changes that seem to favor forceful overhand throwing. Um,
Speaker 1: I remember those changes. They're like changes in the shoulder
Speaker 1: and the waist and the upper arm, all of which
Speaker 1: combined to allow for a more substantial wind up, sort
Speaker 1: of a pulling back of tension of of the biomechanical
Speaker 1: bowstring to be released rapidly during the throw. And we
Speaker 1: also talked about the argument that these changes appear to
Speaker 1: coincide with evidence of meat becoming a bigger part of
Speaker 1: the diet of these hominins, showing that throwing was likely
Speaker 1: useful for obtaining food, either through power scavenging like driving
Speaker 1: predators away from a kill in order to take the
Speaker 1: meat for yourself, or direct hunting uh and either way
Speaker 1: increasing the availability of food energy. Now, one very interesting
Speaker 1: thing about the adaptation for throwing is that it implies
Speaker 1: not only changes in the muscles and the skeletal system.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, you can see all those changes
Speaker 1: around the scapula and the shoulder blade, changes in the waste,
Speaker 1: the arm, and so forth, but it also implies changes
Speaker 1: in cognition. An animal that can throw objects sourced from
Speaker 1: the environment is showing a specialized way of thinking, and
Speaker 1: not just a specialized way of moving. Now what do
Speaker 1: I mean by this? Well, as one example, the author's
Speaker 1: reference a specific captive chimpanzee who came up in the
Speaker 1: last episode, Robi, remember the story of Santino, the chimpanzee
Speaker 1: who was in a zoo and I believe Sweden was it?
Speaker 1: I believe so, Yes, Santino, Yeah, poor Santino. The author's
Speaker 1: right that Santino, who I guess was alive at the
Speaker 1: time this paper was written. Quote, hides rocks out of
Speaker 1: sight of the care staff, waiting to reveal and throw
Speaker 1: them at approaching visitors at the most opportune time. Evidence
Speaker 1: of planning comes from the observation that Santino searches for
Speaker 1: the rocks from a moat inside the enclosure prior to
Speaker 1: the arrival of the care staff and the visitors, and
Speaker 1: cashes the rocks out of sight, only to pull them
Speaker 1: out when the visitors arrive. That is a crafty chimp,
Speaker 1: and that is that is forethought. Hmm. Adding to this,
Speaker 1: the author's uh throwing their own observations of similar pre
Speaker 1: planning behavior in chimpanzees and two other research which environments,
Speaker 1: and they argue that the throwing quote, though often agonistic
Speaker 1: and function and consequence agonistic meaning a sort of confrontational
Speaker 1: aggressive behavior is not part of the apes display behavior. Indeed,
Speaker 1: most instances of aimed throwing that we have observed occur
Speaker 1: without any accompanying display behaviors such as pilo erection, hooting,
Speaker 1: and charging, further suggesting an element of planning on the
Speaker 1: part of the individual ape. Uh. So, I think that's
Speaker 1: interesting too, if you understand what they're saying there, that
Speaker 1: there is a sort of standard display behavior algorithm, like
Speaker 1: when an ape is doing an agonistic display when trying
Speaker 1: to be dominant and aggressive and maybe scare you off.
Speaker 1: It includes all of these sub features like the pilo
Speaker 1: erection meaning the bristling of body hair, hair stands on end, hooting,
Speaker 1: charging back and forth, all that stuff. And they say
Speaker 1: that when the apes throw stuff at people, they do
Speaker 1: it without all of these other features of a typical
Speaker 1: instinctual display. Another way that throwing is different from most
Speaker 1: other forms of tool use and apes. Uh. The most
Speaker 1: commonly observed types of tool use by wild chimpanzees are
Speaker 1: all things where the tool is used to extract otherwise
Speaker 1: unreachable food, often like from a whole or enclosure of
Speaker 1: some kind and then is eaten immediately. So examples here
Speaker 1: would be cracking of nuts with with stones like nutcracking
Speaker 1: is an example of ape tool use, but also termite
Speaker 1: fishing with sticks, ant dipping, and so forth. All of
Speaker 1: these give rise to an immediate food reward for executing
Speaker 1: the behavior, meaning that these behaviors are subject to regular
Speaker 1: operant conditioning rules. Uh. You know, if if a behavior
Speaker 1: leads to an immediate food reward, an animal can learn
Speaker 1: to repeat basically any arbitrary set of actions. So you know,
Speaker 1: chimpanzee gets delicious termites every time it h of course,
Speaker 1: if it if it dips for them, that's one thing.
Speaker 1: But maybe if it stands on one foot and gets
Speaker 1: term it's every time. It may learn to stand on
Speaker 1: one foot to get the meat. Yeah, and we see
Speaker 1: this reflected in so many experiments involving animals over the years.
Speaker 1: You know, can can you get an animal to manipulate
Speaker 1: some sort of technological gadget in order to get a
Speaker 1: food reward? Yeah, pressing a button or something that would
Speaker 1: have no relevance in the natural environment. So other tool
Speaker 1: use behaviors could easily be learned and reinforced through through
Speaker 1: this kind of conditioning. But throwing, as practiced by apes
Speaker 1: does not lead to an immediate food reward. In fact,
Speaker 1: it rarely, if ever, leads to a food reward at all.
Speaker 1: The author's write quote what appears to be the main
Speaker 1: reward for throwing is the simple ability to control or
Speaker 1: manipulate the behavior of the targeted individual ape or human, which,
Speaker 1: though you could consider it a goal, I mean that
Speaker 1: is much more complicated and ambiguous than a direct food reward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's not the ape. And the scenario is throwing
Speaker 1: the rock, hitting the human, and then by hitting the
Speaker 1: human they drop an apple, right yeah. Now, from here,
Speaker 1: the authors go on to discuss the the underappreciated complexity
Speaker 1: of throwing. We also talked about this at length in
Speaker 1: the previous episode. But you know, suffice to say, forceful, precise,
Speaker 1: overhand throwing is an extremely demanding task, not only for
Speaker 1: the muscles but for the brain, uh, requiring split second
Speaker 1: coordination of perceptual judgments, all kinds of things. You know,
Speaker 1: how far away is the target, isn't moving in what direction?
Speaker 1: And how fast? What are the physical properties of the
Speaker 1: projectile and so forth. But then the other thing is
Speaker 1: the sequential motor control. To throw an object, you have
Speaker 1: to precisely time a rapid sequence of muscular movements, and
Speaker 1: other authors have previously suggested that quote the increased selection
Speaker 1: for neural synchrony of rapid muscular sequence routines associated with
Speaker 1: actions such as throwing are similar to the motor programming
Speaker 1: demands of language and speech, and therefore engage similar neural systems,
Speaker 1: notably broke as area. In other words, there are similarities
Speaker 1: between what the brain is doing and what parts of
Speaker 1: the brain are being used to coordinate a throw and
Speaker 1: to process language and perform speech. And one idea that
Speaker 1: gets wrapped up in this is the role of brain lateralization,
Speaker 1: segmenting of brain processes to one hemisphere or side of
Speaker 1: the brain or the other. So in cultures where throwing
Speaker 1: behavior has been studied, the authors say the majority of
Speaker 1: people pretty much always prefer to throw with the right hand.
Speaker 1: Studies in chimpanzees also show a bias toward right handedness
Speaker 1: for throwing, and these right hand preferences suggest left hemisphere
Speaker 1: dominance in the brain and these majorities of both populations
Speaker 1: because when it comes to controlling the body's movements, of course,
Speaker 1: you know the hemispheres are flipped. Generally, the left hemisphere
Speaker 1: links to the right hand and the right hemisphere to
Speaker 1: the left, and so forth. Some researchers have pointed this
Speaker 1: out in the context of the fact that the left
Speaker 1: hemisphere also contains the brain regions, notably Broca's area, that
Speaker 1: dominate the production of speech. Broca's area is also known
Speaker 1: as the motor speech area, and one researcher who has
Speaker 1: focused on this is the American neurophysiologist William H. Calvin,
Speaker 1: who was actually, I think maybe still is a professor
Speaker 1: at the University of Washington at Seattle, who, observing that
Speaker 1: pent of people prefer to throw with the right arm,
Speaker 1: Calvin hypothesized that the left hemisphere's capacity for language may
Speaker 1: have actually evolved from a pre existing adaptation for right
Speaker 1: handed throwing. He apparently published a book that contained this
Speaker 1: hypothesis in nine three. It was called The Throwing Madonna.
Speaker 1: Oh didn't they adapted this into the film? Um a
Speaker 1: lead of their own? Right? Was Madonna in that believe? So? Okay?
Speaker 1: Was she the picture in the movie? Oh? I don't remember,
Speaker 1: but I mean surely she threw a ball at least once.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of of of throwing in baseball, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you throw no matter what position you are. I guess
Speaker 1: the picture throws the most. There's no crying in baseball,
Speaker 1: but there was throwing in baseball. There's a lot that much.
Speaker 1: I remember for the film. Okay, so Madonna was definitely
Speaker 1: throwing no matter what position she played. Um no, but
Speaker 1: unfortunately did not become the basis of the movie as
Speaker 1: far as I know. Instead, it was a place where
Speaker 1: Calvin laid out an interesting, uh sort of story, a
Speaker 1: possible series of developments that could have led to the
Speaker 1: development of language via the stepping stone of of capacity
Speaker 1: for throwing. So the story goes like this, lateralization evolved
Speaker 1: for one handed throwing with the right hand, specifically so
Speaker 1: that parents, typically mothers, could cradle an infant on their
Speaker 1: left side and then they'd be free to throw with
Speaker 1: the right hand if they needed to. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously things like this are hard to prove for sure,
Speaker 1: but that is an interesting idea because I started thinking
Speaker 1: about how I recently became a father, and without thinking
Speaker 1: about it at all, I pretty much always when I
Speaker 1: hold my baby, hold her on on the left side
Speaker 1: of my torso and so if she like falls asleep
Speaker 1: against me, and her head is going to be on
Speaker 1: the left side of my chest, and that from my
Speaker 1: point of view, which is also the side where the
Speaker 1: heartbeat is closer. I never planned it that way, that
Speaker 1: that just sort of happened. And I was talking to
Speaker 1: my wife and she said, yeah, most often she she's
Speaker 1: on the left side there too, So I don't know
Speaker 1: that that's kind of interesting. I mean, it could be
Speaker 1: totally unrelated, but I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could always scoop up on the left side as well.
Speaker 1: My son is now I think finally too big for
Speaker 1: me to do that without seriously injuring myself. But yes,
Speaker 1: and I guess at a certain point you become less
Speaker 1: desiring of the heartbeat sound that like maybe loses some
Speaker 1: of the power it has over over really young infants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess it varies from from child
Speaker 1: to child, depends on how big they get and at
Speaker 1: what point they want that distance. Thank, Okay, well, so
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to know for sure if the need
Speaker 1: to scoop a child and hold them on the left
Speaker 1: side of the body close to the heartbeat is the
Speaker 1: real reason driving brain lateralization. Um, I find it more
Speaker 1: compelling than some other hypotheses that seemed to be on
Speaker 1: offer at the time. One that's sited. I was reading
Speaker 1: a review of this book by Calvin that cited a
Speaker 1: previous hypothesis that the right handedness of because um men
Speaker 1: in battle, I guess prehistoric battle needed to like hold
Speaker 1: a shield above their above their heart on the left side.
Speaker 1: I was like, I get out of here. This this
Speaker 1: discussion reminds me of a painting, might painting that I
Speaker 1: hadn't thought of in a bit, I believe. What is
Speaker 1: the title of this piece is Two Mothers by Leon
Speaker 1: Maxim of Fivery Um. That's if I'm pronouncing that correctly.
Speaker 1: It's f A I V R E. But it's a
Speaker 1: pretty stunning piece in which we see this vision of
Speaker 1: of a prehistoric mother with with very modern touches to it.
Speaker 1: But she's standing here in some sort of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: hide garment, and she has this heavy looking infant in
Speaker 1: her left arm, and then there's another child sort of
Speaker 1: hanging on to her left arm. In her right hand,
Speaker 1: she has uh sex, some sort of a a stone weapon,
Speaker 1: like a wooden wooden half with a with a stone blade,
Speaker 1: some sort of like you know, primitive axe or club.
Speaker 1: And she's staring back into the shadows behind her where
Speaker 1: this is kind of like cave environment, and there's clearly
Speaker 1: an animal lurking there, an animal emerging from the shadows.
Speaker 1: And I think this is supposed to be the other mother,
Speaker 1: the mother that is hunting her. And I have no
Speaker 1: idea of this this uh, this piece has has any
Speaker 1: connection to what we're talking about here. But it is
Speaker 1: interesting that we do see left arm cradling children, right
Speaker 1: arm brandishing a weapon to protect those children against some threat.
Speaker 1: It is a kind of beautiful painting. Yeah, her hair
Speaker 1: is perfect too, like she's really this mom's really got
Speaker 1: it together, perfect hair, protecting the children, ready to brain
Speaker 1: a panther with some sort of a stone weapon. Anyway,
Speaker 1: whatever the cause of the right hand lateralization for sequential
Speaker 1: motor control in in the throwing, uh, the the hypothesis
Speaker 1: goes on from here to suggest that sequential motor control
Speaker 1: regions that made us so good at at tossing a
Speaker 1: stone with one hand were eventually commondered by selection pressure
Speaker 1: for communication and shifted to a different kind of sequential
Speaker 1: motor control, which was language production. Now, when we think
Speaker 1: of language production, we think of speech, and that that
Speaker 1: could be the case. I think Calvin argued for a
Speaker 1: transitional stage where the original language was more gesture based,
Speaker 1: like gesturing with the hands maybe, which would have then
Speaker 1: transitioned into speech production with the mouth. Again, like many
Speaker 1: things here, that's not something we know for sure, so
Speaker 1: we're in very speculative territory. But I do find this
Speaker 1: really interesting. So again, if there's anything to this story,
Speaker 1: it would go that for some reason, there is an
Speaker 1: original right hand left brain motor lateralization for the majority
Speaker 1: of the population for throwing objects. Human ancestors get really
Speaker 1: good at throwing with that one hand, maybe cradling a
Speaker 1: baby in the other and or doing something else. And
Speaker 1: then you could argue that the lateralization for precise sequential
Speaker 1: motor activity in the left brain uh to power throwing,
Speaker 1: eventually provides the neurological scaffolding for the left brain's capacity
Speaker 1: for language and speech. Now, what was the actual experiment
Speaker 1: in this study, Well, it was looking at our closest
Speaker 1: primate relatives to see if they could provide any insight
Speaker 1: on what might have been going on in the brains
Speaker 1: of very distant human ancestors, so they were looking at chimpanzees. Now, again,
Speaker 1: chimpanzees don't throw nearly as well or as often as
Speaker 1: we do, but some throw sometimes, So what if anything
Speaker 1: is different in the brains of chimpanzees that reliably throw
Speaker 1: versus those that don't. Specifically, the authors looked at the
Speaker 1: ratio of two different types of brain tissue, white matter
Speaker 1: and gray matter in the areas of chimpanzee brains that
Speaker 1: would be most similar to the area of the human
Speaker 1: brain involved in motor control for throwing and for speech,
Speaker 1: and this would be quote the homologue to Broca's area.
Speaker 1: Remember again broke as areas involved in speech production and humans.
Speaker 1: And then they also say as well as the motor
Speaker 1: hand area of the precentral gyrus termed the knob K
Speaker 1: and O B. And what they found was that in
Speaker 1: both of these areas, in the chimpanzee equivalent of Broca's
Speaker 1: area and in the knob, the ratio of white matter
Speaker 1: to gray matter was higher in chimpanzees that throw versus
Speaker 1: those that don't. Also quote, we further found that asymmetries
Speaker 1: in white matter within both brain regions were larger in
Speaker 1: the hemisphere contralateral to the chimpanzees preferred throwing hand. So
Speaker 1: what they're saying is it's it's not just that the
Speaker 1: ratio of white matter was higher in these regions on
Speaker 1: both sides of the brain. It's that whichever hand the
Speaker 1: chimpanzee like to throw with those particular regions had a
Speaker 1: higher proportion of white matter on the opposite side of
Speaker 1: the brain. Also, they assessed the chimpanzees in this study
Speaker 1: with what is called a Primate Cognition Test BATTERY or
Speaker 1: pct B, which is, uh, you know, a sort of
Speaker 1: an s a t for for for chimpanzees, standard tests
Speaker 1: on all kinds of mental abilities, you know, uh, tons
Speaker 1: of things, spatial memory, causality, inference, tool property recognition, gaze following,
Speaker 1: and so forth. And they were looking at, well, are
Speaker 1: there any differences between apes that throw and apes that
Speaker 1: don't throw? And out of this entire test battery generally not. Generally,
Speaker 1: there were no cognitive differences except in one area. There
Speaker 1: was only one aptitude where there was a significant difference,
Speaker 1: and it was that researchers found chimpanzees that were more
Speaker 1: inclined to throw were also better at social communication. So
Speaker 1: the author's right quote these results suggest that chimpanzees that
Speaker 1: have learned throw have developed greater cortical connectivity that's correlating
Speaker 1: with the white matter between the primary motor cortex and
Speaker 1: the Broca's area. Homologue, it is suggested that during hominin evolution,
Speaker 1: after the split between lines leading to chimpanzees and humans,
Speaker 1: there was intense selection on increased motor skills associated with throwing,
Speaker 1: and that this potentially formed the foundation for left hemisphere
Speaker 1: specialization associated with language and speech found in modern humans.
Speaker 1: So this is another case where I think this is
Speaker 1: far from proven. We would need much more robust evidence
Speaker 1: before you could endorse this specific evolutionary story as as likely.
Speaker 1: But I find this very intriguing and it does seem
Speaker 1: possible to me that the capacity for throwing gave rise
Speaker 1: to the capacity for language. M So eight throws the bone,
Speaker 1: the bone spins around, the bone becomes a space station,
Speaker 1: just as Kubrick promised this. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to get back into this idea of early humans,
Speaker 1: especially throwing stones as weapons and throwing other things as weapons. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, as we discussed in the last episode, we
Speaker 1: we talked about some of the ideas concerning the development
Speaker 1: of ranged weapon technology and prehistoric humans. This idea that
Speaker 1: what first begins as a way of engaging and agonistic
Speaker 1: communication could transform into just a way of physically sending
Speaker 1: a message to another species via projectile. But then eventually
Speaker 1: that begins to get in this way to manipulate their
Speaker 1: behavior at range, especially in the case of power scavenging,
Speaker 1: and ultimately it can be used as a way to
Speaker 1: hunt prey animals. And as we were actually recording that episode,
Speaker 1: my mind kept turning to these images of some sort
Speaker 1: of prehistoric warfare scenario in which some you know, entirely
Speaker 1: to kubra cky prehistoric people were employing various weapons and
Speaker 1: and kind of probably also probably a slightly to table
Speaker 1: top war game manner or where you have you know,
Speaker 1: units of bone wielding beaters moving forward to engage in
Speaker 1: some melee attacks, and then maybe you have some units
Speaker 1: of rock throwers behind them. Um, and you know this
Speaker 1: this felt kind of silly in my head, maybe even
Speaker 1: a little Gary Larson uh esque in my head, a
Speaker 1: little far side, But then I started looking into it
Speaker 1: more because of course, you know, rock throwers were an
Speaker 1: important part of of of of our history, and when
Speaker 1: you start looking into the history of not only range weaponry,
Speaker 1: but hand thrown range weaponry, it gets pretty fascinating. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one of the main things that
Speaker 1: striking is rediscovering how potent to force simple thrown objects are,
Speaker 1: even in an era where where powered projectile technology like
Speaker 1: bows or crossbows or even guns exist. When you think
Speaker 1: of somebody's throwing rocks, there at least can be this
Speaker 1: sort of feeling that it's like a juvenile sort of thing,
Speaker 1: that it's primitive, that it's a nuisance. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, I think most of us realized that it's
Speaker 1: also quite dangerous. Nobody wants to be hit in the
Speaker 1: head with a thrown rock. A well aimed thrown rock
Speaker 1: can of course be deadly true, and on top of that,
Speaker 1: a volley of thrown rocks from multiple assailants uh even
Speaker 1: more dangerous. And of course we see this reflected in
Speaker 1: the use of stoning as a form of execution from
Speaker 1: ancient times through through modern times. But I didn't want
Speaker 1: to dwell so much on that because that's more depressing
Speaker 1: subject matter. But I wanted to focus more on hand
Speaker 1: thrown stones and weapons in a hunting and warfare context. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I think for many of us, and this was
Speaker 1: me until just the other day, we tend to think
Speaker 1: of ranged weapons as this steady ascent out of the
Speaker 1: Stone Age. So sure, we threw stones at things then,
Speaker 1: and we greatly increased our ability to strategically employ those
Speaker 1: thrown stones. But then we got why, and then we
Speaker 1: coach We probably got wiser about how we selected stones, granted,
Speaker 1: but then eventually we're gonna level upright, You're gonna up
Speaker 1: raid to using something like a sling, a spear or
Speaker 1: a spear thrower, a bow and arrow across bow, etcetera,
Speaker 1: all the way up through the modern era. And it's
Speaker 1: I think it's easy to think of this as a
Speaker 1: linear progression, or like a video game skill tree, a
Speaker 1: situation where you could you're you're yelling at the screen, Hey,
Speaker 1: don't equip the throwing rock, you fool. You have a spear,
Speaker 1: Now equip the spear. Yes, yes, video game logic per
Speaker 1: pervades our our thoughts in every way. Yeah, but of
Speaker 1: course that this is not exactly how things pan out.
Speaker 1: For a number of reasons, speaking broadly in terms of
Speaker 1: just weaponry in general, materials are one factor, but and
Speaker 1: we've discussed that on the show before, but another huge
Speaker 1: factor to consider is that humans are such great natural throwers,
Speaker 1: as we've been discussing, and it's such a big part
Speaker 1: of the weapon history, that there just may not be
Speaker 1: a good reason to completely abandon the hand thrown stone, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can imagine cases where people are having
Speaker 1: great success with with just hand thrown stones, and and
Speaker 1: why why fixed what's not broken? Yeah? And then if
Speaker 1: something also becomes a part of culture, becomes a part
Speaker 1: of a martial art um and a weapon tradition, uh,
Speaker 1: and then there's this added incentive to keep it around.
Speaker 1: So I started looking into some examples from Polynesian weaponry
Speaker 1: and martial arts. The first thing I ran across was
Speaker 1: an interesting mention in the Coming of the Maori Weapons,
Speaker 1: a text by New Zealand anthropologist and doctor t Ranghi
Speaker 1: Heroa who lived eighteen seventy seven through ninette. In discussing
Speaker 1: the prevalence for spears and clubs in Polynesian history, he
Speaker 1: also discusses the swing as a primary range weapon along
Speaker 1: with the spear, and then he shares the following quote,
Speaker 1: stones were also thrown by hand and early European voyagers
Speaker 1: have reported this form of attack more than the use
Speaker 1: of the swing. The bow and arrow, while president some groups,
Speaker 1: was used for sport but not as a weapon of war.
Speaker 1: In Samoa it was used to shoot pigeons, in Hawaii
Speaker 1: to shoot rats, and in the Society Islands it was
Speaker 1: a chiefly sport in which archers clad in special costume
Speaker 1: shot for distance from raised stone platforms. Now, obviously this
Speaker 1: is an older source here, but instantly reading this you realize, well,
Speaker 1: this is true. It raises interesting possibilities about the dependability
Speaker 1: of throne stones as weaponry even as other technologies come online. Right,
Speaker 1: so you could have the technology of a bow but
Speaker 1: still prefer hand thrown stones for some utilities. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: the advantages of the bow, of course are well documented.
Speaker 1: You know. And none of this, none of this wo
Speaker 1: we're getting into, is going to be a statement that
Speaker 1: along the lines of well, actually a throne rock is
Speaker 1: better than a high power bow or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But um, and and it's true that the use of
Speaker 1: the bow was widespread not only in ancient armies but
Speaker 1: among hunter gatherers. But as Thomas Skult points out in
Speaker 1: a section on range, Weaponry and the book seventy Great
Speaker 1: Inventions of the Ancient World. Not all hunter gatherers use
Speaker 1: the bow and arrow. He mentions Australian Aborigines as an
Speaker 1: example of a people who did not, despite some of
Speaker 1: them surely being aware of the technology via contact with
Speaker 1: the tourists Straight Islanders who used bows. That they were
Speaker 1: still people that that retained the use of ranged weaponry.
Speaker 1: That depended on on hand thrown objects, and will come
Speaker 1: back to the most famous uh classification of hand thrown
Speaker 1: objects that they used in a bit. But but where
Speaker 1: I really got fascinated with all of this was it
Speaker 1: was a paper from two thousand and eleven. This was
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of the Polynesian Society by Barbara
Speaker 1: Isaac and Guinaria Isaac titled Unexpected Trajectories, a History of
Speaker 1: New Way and Throwing Stones. The authors here describe the
Speaker 1: war stones of New Way. New Way is an island
Speaker 1: that's um fift miles or dred kilometers northeast of News
Speaker 1: Zealand and When Captain James Cook visited the island in
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy four, he dubbed at the Savage Island, which
Speaker 1: may have had something to do with their consumption of
Speaker 1: the native banana species, which to understand had like a
Speaker 1: red peal and an orange just interior and if in
Speaker 1: the teeth or rubbed on the body might look like blood.
Speaker 1: But this also clearly reflects Cook's general attitude towards indigenous
Speaker 1: peoples as well. But he also certainly seemed to have
Speaker 1: encountered some difficulty in landing on New Way. It's apparently
Speaker 1: difficult to land on the island anyway due to the
Speaker 1: surrounding coral reefs. But the people of New Way were
Speaker 1: also hostile to his landing attempts and his naturalists. The
Speaker 1: naturalists on on this particular voyage, Andrews Sparman was injured
Speaker 1: by a thrown stone. I believe it got him in
Speaker 1: the arm. Mm hmm. The New Way here they were
Speaker 1: they were not just picking up random stones and throwing
Speaker 1: them either. Uh, this is where it gets really fast thing.
Speaker 1: They had a highly refined approach to the use of
Speaker 1: hand thrown range stone weaponry. According to Isaac and Isaac,
Speaker 1: the warriors were reported at the time to each have
Speaker 1: spears on their person to have a swing, and also
Speaker 1: have a pouch of stones for throwing. But throwing stones
Speaker 1: and swing launch stones were not uncommon among other people
Speaker 1: who are encountered on islands from this vast region. So comparatively,
Speaker 1: there wasn't much Western commentary on these throwing stones. But
Speaker 1: the throwing stones of of new A, according to Isaac
Speaker 1: and Isaac, were quite singular, and much of it would
Speaker 1: come out later through indigenous recollections, the work of later
Speaker 1: anthropologists and missionaries, as well as later analysis of stones
Speaker 1: that were subsequently taken off the island after Western contact.
Speaker 1: Thank thank so. These wars stones, Uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: crazy thing about them is that, again these are not
Speaker 1: just stones that were picked up or even stones that
Speaker 1: were sort of painstakingly collected, and the way that one
Speaker 1: might scour the rocks by a stream to find the
Speaker 1: best rocks for skipping. Now, these were crafted items made
Speaker 1: of I think predominantly limestone crafted items. So you might
Speaker 1: think of this as more like an arrow or an
Speaker 1: axe head or something, but it is a stone for
Speaker 1: throwing with the hand right right. The people here would
Speaker 1: harvest the stone, apparently from stalactites and stalagmites in naturally
Speaker 1: occurring caves on the island and then wear them down
Speaker 1: in the into the desired shape by working them over
Speaker 1: with other pieces of stone or with pieces of coral.
Speaker 1: So we're talking considerable manufacturing effort going into these. Again,
Speaker 1: they're not just picked up off the ground. They're not
Speaker 1: even um scavenge from the ground. They are manufactured from
Speaker 1: materials that are harvested. They tended to weigh around three
Speaker 1: to four pounds each and they were largely spherical in shape. Um.
Speaker 1: They were often compared to small cannon balls by by
Speaker 1: Western commentators, but the difference is that they were elongated
Speaker 1: a little bit on the two opposing ends. You can
Speaker 1: look up pictures of these online and they to me,
Speaker 1: if I was to compare them to a naturally occurring object,
Speaker 1: I would say they kind of look like like well
Speaker 1: crafted stone lemons or lines. I was gonna say, lemon, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah they have that. Or I guess you could
Speaker 1: almost say they don't really look like a football, but
Speaker 1: they have I guess a slightly football esque shape, or
Speaker 1: they remind me of certain like malformed or not malformed,
Speaker 1: but sort of slightly unrealistic toy football as you might
Speaker 1: have seen if you were a child, uh you know,
Speaker 1: back in the eighties or something. Sorry, I was just
Speaker 1: briefly amused by the concept of a toy football. Well,
Speaker 1: well you have the functional football is for serious business,
Speaker 1: for the sport of American football, and then you have
Speaker 1: you have something that's that's less serious. This is a football,
Speaker 1: this is not for playing with. So you did have
Speaker 1: Western observers though, that we're figuring a lot of this out,
Speaker 1: that these war stones were indeed crafted items, that they
Speaker 1: were made out of limestone. Uh, that people would harvest
Speaker 1: the stone from againstalactites and stalagmites, and uh, there's some
Speaker 1: really interesting takes on this that are reported in this uh,
Speaker 1: this paper. UH. In eight sixty eight, Missionary Thomas Powell
Speaker 1: wrote that quote, this fact is remarkable as an indication
Speaker 1: of thought and design natural to this people. For it
Speaker 1: is not probable that the first inhabitants brought the ideas
Speaker 1: with them. But they found this limestone in the caves,
Speaker 1: saw the use to which it might be put, and
Speaker 1: designed the shape. It is therefore original on their part,
Speaker 1: and in this particular they anticipated the European science of
Speaker 1: the recent century. Now they don't note what he was
Speaker 1: referring to here on the European science thing. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: maybe airships I'm not sure they kind of have an
Speaker 1: airship look to him, I guess. Now. On the limestone front,
Speaker 1: nineteenth and twentieth century anthropologists described other war stones that
Speaker 1: were sometimes used that might have been made of other materials,
Speaker 1: one of of bassault, one of coral, for example. You
Speaker 1: definitely have examples of like a black um a stone
Speaker 1: of black war stone, but limestone seems to be the
Speaker 1: primary material. They were highly prized and were used exclusively
Speaker 1: for conflict um and there was apparently a lot of
Speaker 1: conflict on the on the island. You know, this before
Speaker 1: there were any Westerners even, and part of it had
Speaker 1: to do with uh, you know, droughts would occur and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of skirmishing for available resources. But
Speaker 1: they didn't hunt with them apparently, so birds were hunted
Speaker 1: with uh what are referred to as bird bows in
Speaker 1: this paper, and fish were hunted with nets. So these
Speaker 1: were exclusively for dealing with human threats or perceived human threats.
Speaker 1: Warriors would carry them in bags or on belts, and
Speaker 1: if they ran out of ammo, it's mentioned that they
Speaker 1: would naturally make use of stones from the ground as well,
Speaker 1: so they weren't above, you know, reaching down and grabbing
Speaker 1: whatever was available and throwing that. After your special stones
Speaker 1: were extinguished, and then of course after a skirmish or battle,
Speaker 1: you would hopefully be able to go back and pick
Speaker 1: up your your AMMO retrieve them. Because other sources mentioned
Speaker 1: that they often they had names, they had histories, histories
Speaker 1: of violence, and so these these particular stones would kind
Speaker 1: of resonate with importance to the individual who wielded it. HM.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting that if the stones are you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're manufactured with care, and they're used specifically for
Speaker 1: human conflict instead of hunting. I mean, it makes me
Speaker 1: think about them them having I don't know, some kind
Speaker 1: of special like communicative or signaling power in addition to
Speaker 1: their ability to hit and hurt someone. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so. Um. Here was another great quote. This one
Speaker 1: is reference in the paper as well from anthropologist Edwin Loeb,
Speaker 1: who wrote the following about the the importance of the
Speaker 1: stones the individuals quote. The fighting stones all had special names,
Speaker 1: and they were put in a kafa or girdle, which
Speaker 1: was a plated like a matt. The kafa was about
Speaker 1: six to seven inches wide and was customarily four fathoms
Speaker 1: in length. The third night before the war arrived. They
Speaker 1: wound the kafa around their stomachs and slept in this
Speaker 1: manner during the night, neither eating or drinking. So in
Speaker 1: this paper, the the the authors here they they point
Speaker 1: out that these Nuegan stones, these war stones, um. There
Speaker 1: were songs about them um. And part of their importance
Speaker 1: also may have had to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: they were products of the caves which were sacred sides
Speaker 1: with it seems like connections to the afterlife. And of
Speaker 1: course this matches up with the way caves were viewed
Speaker 1: by people's and other parts of the world as well.
Speaker 1: The stones were used in ambush attacks and skirmishes, but
Speaker 1: also sometimes in fights to the death uh would occur,
Speaker 1: but it seems like a lot of these battles, based
Speaker 1: on some of the commentaries UH, may not have been
Speaker 1: typically that lethal. UH. So, Yeah, this does line up
Speaker 1: with this idea of communication. It's not necessarily about going
Speaker 1: out and absolutely murdering the competition, but driving them away
Speaker 1: from resources that you're looking to control. And in the paper,
Speaker 1: the authors also mostly speculate on accuracy here and part
Speaker 1: of this was based on accounts of other throwing techniques
Speaker 1: by other advanced stone or club throwing groups. But they
Speaker 1: speculate that high accuracy was likely within twenty yards or
Speaker 1: eighteen meters roughly, but greater distance accuracy was certainly possible.
Speaker 1: And I think this makes sense when you consider the
Speaker 1: likely scenarios in which these stones are being used. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: any kind of sort of tabletop gaming scenario um that
Speaker 1: you have in your mind should probably set aside. It
Speaker 1: sounds like most of these these encounters, these battles would
Speaker 1: have involved like one individual against one another individual or
Speaker 1: one small group against another. It seems like skirmishes and
Speaker 1: small ambushes were sort of the the typical uh, encounter
Speaker 1: context for their usage. So anyways, it's a fascinating paper.
Speaker 1: It's available on j store if anyone wants to read more. Uh.
Speaker 1: They really get in depth about the history of it
Speaker 1: and various uh uh mostly Western commentators who are looking
Speaker 1: at it. And also how these how the use of
Speaker 1: the stones was you know, disappeared and then the stone
Speaker 1: owns went out throughout the world and then we're to
Speaker 1: certain degrees brought back or studied. Now, this was certainly
Speaker 1: the most to me anyway remarkable account of stone throwing.
Speaker 1: I came across, but not the only account of specialized
Speaker 1: throwing stones. I ran across the work of Guy Stible
Speaker 1: talking about archaeology finds in Jerusalem and the accumulated weapons
Speaker 1: and AMMO that they were finding. Uh, this was a
Speaker 1: paper that came out on ten. This is from a
Speaker 1: chapter title Military Equipment in a larger collection of papers
Speaker 1: titled Jerusalem Excavations in the Tyropean Valley. And yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of discussion of things like
Speaker 1: the things you would expect to find, sling stones and
Speaker 1: so forth, other types of projectiles. But then there's an
Speaker 1: interesting part where he mentions he starts talking about what
Speaker 1: may have been stones that were brestley collected and even
Speaker 1: crafted for throwing. Quote three flint balls have a single
Speaker 1: flat face, unlike weights or grinding stones that frequently exhibit
Speaker 1: multiple flat surfaces. They were ideal for heaping on top
Speaker 1: of battlements, as modern experiments have demonstrated. In a light
Speaker 1: of parallels from both Palestine and the Roman West, it
Speaker 1: appears that the use of hand thrown stones was much
Speaker 1: more prevalent than has been previously appreciated in modern scholarship. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. The single flat face, So that would be
Speaker 1: a stone that was modified or selected to have a
Speaker 1: single flat face in order to make it easier to
Speaker 1: stack in a pile, and so it wouldn't roll away. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for use on battlements, which I guess also the other
Speaker 1: side of that is, not only do you not want
Speaker 1: your AMMO to roll away, you don't want it to
Speaker 1: roll off the battlements with with you know, fatal gravity
Speaker 1: ascents potentially, um, if you're not meaning to drop it. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never I've never thought about this before. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've certainly researched siege scenarios before, where it's it's very
Speaker 1: obvious that if you have the advantage of battlements, there's
Speaker 1: a great deal you can do without the need for
Speaker 1: the power of a bow. You can just drop things
Speaker 1: on people underneath. And it was and dropping things on
Speaker 1: your besiegers was it was a favorite tactic that you
Speaker 1: could drop rocks, you could drop various burning things, oils, etcetera,
Speaker 1: all manner of things. And again with with legal intensity,
Speaker 1: but this idea of of not just having stones, but
Speaker 1: stones that had been to some degree altered or manufactured
Speaker 1: or crafted in order to just stack up there so
Speaker 1: they're ready to go, but they're also not rolling out
Speaker 1: of out of out of sight and posing a danger
Speaker 1: to anyone who might just say, be working beneath. Now,
Speaker 1: there are also several interesting cases of probably many many
Speaker 1: more on top of what I'm gonna highlight here, of
Speaker 1: hand thrown clubs and throwing sticks. So you know, we've
Speaker 1: been talking about throwing rocks, but of course throwing sticks.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of the the other side of the
Speaker 1: equation here. And you find examples of these traditions just
Speaker 1: throughout the world on various continents um. The throwing stick
Speaker 1: was used as a hunting tool by prehistoric peoples, and
Speaker 1: we have examples of these going back at least some
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand years UM. One of the problems that
Speaker 1: and this is something that's pointed out in a paper
Speaker 1: I was looking at by Conrad at All in Nature,
Speaker 1: Ecology and evolution, is that a throwing stick is generally
Speaker 1: a wooden stick, and therefore it's not always going to
Speaker 1: survive to become an artifact that can be studied and interpreted, um,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of thousands of a few years later,
Speaker 1: but the practice of hunting with thrown sticks certainly survived.
Speaker 1: The ancient Egyptians written aimed a practice of hunting with
Speaker 1: throwing sticks, and we see this commemorated both in their
Speaker 1: hieroglyphics but also in um in art. Uh I included
Speaker 1: an image for you to look at here, Joe, where
Speaker 1: you see an individual um clearly out by the water side.
Speaker 1: They are all these birds around and in one hand
Speaker 1: the individual was holding up this, this throwing stick. And
Speaker 1: this is sort of a um an an indwaited club
Speaker 1: of sorts that can be thrown. Yeah, yeah, and I
Speaker 1: mean we we also see the use of this in
Speaker 1: other cultures as well. The hope He tribes people of
Speaker 1: North America also used a type of hunting sticks, sometimes
Speaker 1: referred to as a rabbit stick name for the prey
Speaker 1: you would go after with this, with this tool, with
Speaker 1: this weapon. Throwing clubs throwing sticks were also used in
Speaker 1: um in warfare scenarios and also in um In in
Speaker 1: war related ceremonies and uh and symbolism. Fiji islanders us
Speaker 1: beautiful and ceremonial throwing war clubs. Uh These were called
Speaker 1: ula us and you can look up examples of these.
Speaker 1: Some key African traditions of throwing clubs are notable as well,
Speaker 1: including the East African rungou as well as the knob
Speaker 1: carry of Southern and Eastern Africa. And these were used
Speaker 1: for hunting and war, but also became highly symbolic social
Speaker 1: signifiers as well. Yeah, but I feel like you, the
Speaker 1: idea that the throne blunt weapon, the throwing club is
Speaker 1: something that is often I guess glossed over and in
Speaker 1: at least in the Western mindset. Uh. You know, just
Speaker 1: again coming back as always two things like Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: where we we wrap all these fantasy scenarios around, uh,
Speaker 1: the use of ranged and melee weaponry. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to dismiss the idea that, yeah, that the club
Speaker 1: also is a potential range weapon. Uh though of course
Speaker 1: I think Dungeons and Dragons does at least have a
Speaker 1: boomerang in it. Um. And the boomerang is probably the
Speaker 1: most famous and I guess the most exceptional of the
Speaker 1: throne clubs, uh that that humans have developed over the ages.
Speaker 1: The boomerang is is exceptional because it's it's still essentially
Speaker 1: a throne club that kills our injurs via blunt force,
Speaker 1: but it is also crafted to spin in just the
Speaker 1: right way and by virtue of its shape to generate
Speaker 1: in an aerofoil, which then increases the distance that it
Speaker 1: can be thrown. So it's not only you know, throne,
Speaker 1: but it also begins to take on flight, uh in
Speaker 1: a in a fascinating manner. Yeah. I remember being fascinated
Speaker 1: by the boomerang as as far back as when I
Speaker 1: was a little kid. Yeah. And according to to Thomas Hewlett,
Speaker 1: we run into the wooden artifact problem again with boomerangs.
Speaker 1: But convincing boomerangs have been discovered as old as ten
Speaker 1: thousand years uh, so that they've they've been around for
Speaker 1: quite a while. There are returning boomerangs and their non
Speaker 1: returning boomerangs. Um. Non returning boomerangs were primarily weapons, while
Speaker 1: returning boomerangs were I think more in the recreational and
Speaker 1: symbolic and mythological sphere of things um, but could also
Speaker 1: be used apparently in hunting scenarios as some sort of
Speaker 1: decoy uh for I think birds of prey, but also
Speaker 1: as a means of frightening intended bird prey. So they
Speaker 1: weren't without um functional uses. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of things similar to these boomerangs that we find in
Speaker 1: other cultures as well, Like the Tamil people had a
Speaker 1: kind of non returning boomerang of their own called of Alari,
Speaker 1: and you can look at the various images of this
Speaker 1: as well. Has a slight boomerang shape, kind of a
Speaker 1: tusk like shape. Yeah. Now, going back to Thomas cool
Speaker 1: It here, he points out that broadly speaking, the evolution
Speaker 1: of range weaponry was initially uh an evolution that had
Speaker 1: a lot to do with range. Throwing weapons greatly increase
Speaker 1: the range at which human beings may inflict harm. But
Speaker 1: then additional throwing technologies extend that range, and this of
Speaker 1: course in creases what we can do with them from
Speaker 1: a hunting standpoint, but also provides advantages over other human adversaries,
Speaker 1: at least under the right conditions. But I think these
Speaker 1: examples show that it's not just a matter of abandoning
Speaker 1: the use of hand thrown projectiles. We retain the physical
Speaker 1: abilities as well as the basic skill sets, and we
Speaker 1: see this reflected in our sports as well as our
Speaker 1: weapon cultures. Hand thrown weapon traditions clearly survived the advent
Speaker 1: of other ranged weapon technologies and in many cases retained
Speaker 1: important cultural values as well. And there's one final wrinkle
Speaker 1: here too that I almost completely blanked on. I almost
Speaker 1: didn't have anything about this in the notes, but then
Speaker 1: I of course remembered well. As we venture into the
Speaker 1: age of explosives, hand thrown weaponry remains important in the
Speaker 1: form of hand grenades. The more common variety of grenade
Speaker 1: is of course made to be thrown by hand, much
Speaker 1: like a throwing stone, more or less fits in the
Speaker 1: human palm, though we also have the example of the
Speaker 1: German stick hand grenade that was used in the First
Speaker 1: and Second World Wars and I think adopted by some
Speaker 1: other groups as well during this period. But as the
Speaker 1: name implies, this design features a long handle, and these
Speaker 1: were thrown end over end, much like a hunting stick
Speaker 1: or a throne club. Now, in both cases, obviously, given
Speaker 1: that this is an item that will explode, you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to be as precise. It's not a situation
Speaker 1: where you have to hit somebody in the head with
Speaker 1: it or in the neck with it every time for
Speaker 1: the weapon to be successful, though I guess there would
Speaker 1: be situations where you were trying to throw said grenade
Speaker 1: into say a window or some sort of an opening
Speaker 1: and a tank, etcetera. Well, or like in other cases
Speaker 1: we've looked at to compel behavior, to like drive people
Speaker 1: away from a particular location. Yeah, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: Monty Python many months back, and I of course thought
Speaker 1: of the Holy hand grenade of antioch U, the magical
Speaker 1: weapon that is used against the the killer rabbit and um.
Speaker 1: And I remember looking around a little bit like just
Speaker 1: to see is there anything in use during the general
Speaker 1: historic range that we're talking about here that would have
Speaker 1: been like a grenade, And as I recalled, there wasn't really,
Speaker 1: so I guess there is maybe a potential lag. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's this kind of gap between the high age of
Speaker 1: stone throwing and stick throwing as a viable weapon and
Speaker 1: then the emergence of explosives, which kind of reignites the
Speaker 1: the need to be able to throw precisely or at
Speaker 1: least with some degree of precision. You don't want to
Speaker 1: throw a hand garnaide imprecisely. Um, but we certainly say
Speaker 1: with hand grenades that like the need for individuals to
Speaker 1: throw these things becomes all the more important. I mean, Um,
Speaker 1: you look at images of say modern soldiers training to
Speaker 1: throw hand grenades, and there's a definite like uh form
Speaker 1: to how you do it, you know, like there's definite
Speaker 1: training in place, so uh precise throwing of handheld object
Speaker 1: remains uh seemingly important part of of the modern military scenario.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't plan it like this, but it's
Speaker 1: interesting how this series began as us uh wanting to
Speaker 1: look at examples of non human animals throwing and uh
Speaker 1: and ultimately the main thing that I'm taking away from
Speaker 1: it is is the special role of throwing in in
Speaker 1: the development of human culture and human cognition. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was surprised by as well, because yeah, it was
Speaker 1: we started off with the occopus and now here we
Speaker 1: are talking about soldiers with grenades. We have to keep
Speaker 1: the grenades away from the octopus is by the way, yes,
Speaker 1: I should also point I didn't even get into the
Speaker 1: use of sharpened throwing weapons, but obviously that's a huge
Speaker 1: part of weapon culture throughout history as well. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I guess it felt like one step manufacturing or materially
Speaker 1: away from just throwing a stick or throwing a rock,
Speaker 1: So I didn't get into that, but obviously there's a
Speaker 1: lot one could a fationally discussed involving hand thrown axes,
Speaker 1: hand thrown darts and knives and so forth. So I
Speaker 1: guess different aerodynamic properties come into play with at least
Speaker 1: some of those weapon designs. All Right, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and end it there, but we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everyone out there if you have thoughts, uh feedback
Speaker 1: experience on anything we've discussed here in this episode or
Speaker 1: the previous episodes regarding animals throwing things, humans throwing things, UM,
Speaker 1: the the role that uh that that being able to
Speaker 1: throw something may have in the development of language UM,
Speaker 1: and also just the various UM weapons cultures martial arts
Speaker 1: that have involved hand thrown objects. If you have anything
Speaker 1: to add about any of that police right in, we
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. Just a reminder that
Speaker 1: Stuffed by Your Mind is a science podcast with core
Speaker 1: episodes publishing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday's we do
Speaker 1: a listener mail, and that's that's what you can write
Speaker 1: in discuss some of the mail that comes in. On
Speaker 1: Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster fact episode,
Speaker 1: and then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns
Speaker 1: to just talk about a strange film on Weird House
Speaker 1: Cinema huch thanks to our audio producer J. J. Pauseway.
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