A javelin (throwing spear) refers to the act of throwing a spear, or a spear specifically designed for throwing.

We see these kinds of pictures a lot in our lives. Paleolithic Homo sapiens hunting a massive mammoth by throwing spears. Thanks to the synergy of human tool-making intelligence and a body optimized for throwing, humans became the apex predators of the ecosystem. You could say humans are the only ones capable of actually aiming and throwing things.

As you know, throwing isn't just about swinging your arm. It's closer to a full-body workout using your wrists, waist, and lower body. This sequence requires perfect bipedalism, strong legs, shoulders that can rotate freely at a 90-degree angle, depth perception, and the intelligence to predict the projectile's movement. It's basically a human-exclusive trait. Plus, making a javelin wasn't as simple as you'd think.

This is roughly what a Paleolithic javelin looked like. Considering that just tying and gluing things back then required significant technical skill, it looks like a pretty complex tool.

First, here's the tip. It's not just a rock stuck on a stick like we usually imagine. Since the tip of the spear is prone to breaking during a hunt, they made a hole in the shaft and created a separate part called a 'foreshaft' so it could be easily replaced.

The back part had bird feathers attached to improve straight-line stability. It's a mystery how they figured out that adding feathers makes things fly better.

But the biggest innovation is this 'atlatl' (spear-thrower). You poke a hole in the 'butt' of the spear, hook that ring-like thing into the hole, and throw it.

The javelins we're used to seeing look like this, where you grip the shaft directly and hurl it, so the spear-thrower feels unfamiliar. The primary function of the atlatl is to increase the rotation radius by the length of the stick, allowing for more instantaneous force. Most importantly, it makes the throwing process easier. Unlike hand-throwing, where you have to let go mid-way to throw in a straight line (making it hard to follow through), using an atlatl lets you swing it all the way through like a club, allowing you to literally smack it with full power. It's estimated that the invention of the spear-thrower increased human throwing distance by nearly tenfold. Carving the hook and securing it firmly required immense skill and effort, as evidenced by artifacts found with animal carvings on the atlatls.

This shows that highly skilled and important people made them, and that atlatls and javelins were considered crucial resources. The javelin wasn't just one of many hunting methods in the Late Paleolithic; it was humanity's literal bread and butter.


๊ทธ๋งํผ ๊ธฐ์ ๋ ฅ์๊ณ ์ค์ํ ์ฌ๋์ด ์ด๋ฅผ ์ ์ํ๊ณ ๋ ์ฐฝ๋์ง๊ฐ์ ํฌ์ฐฝ์ด ์๋นํ ์ค์ํ ์์์ผ๋ก ์ฌ๊ฒจ์ก๋ค๋ ๊ฒ๋ ์ ์ ์๋ค. ํฌ์ฐฝ์ด๋ผ๋ ๊ฒ์ ํ๊ธฐ๊ตฌ์๊ธฐ ์๋ ๋จ์ง ์ฌ๋ฅ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ์ค ํ๋์๋ ๊ฒ์ด ์๋๋ผ ์ธ๋ฅ์ ๋ฐฅ์ค ๊ทธ ์์ฒด์๋ ๊ฒ์ด๋ค. ์ถ์ฒ: ์ฑ๊ธ๋ฒ๊ธ ์ง๊ตฌ์ด ๊ฐค๋ฌ๋ฆฌ [์๋ณธ ๋ณด๊ธฐ]
"Users are genuinely impressed by the atlatl's 'high-tech' engineering, while some are distracted by League of Legends references and the classic 'Toochang' vs 'Duchang' pun."
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