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Old 08-15-2011, 05:25 PM   #21
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Default Re: Mammoth vs. Stone Spears

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Originally Posted by Lord Carnifex View Post
Bear in mind that, from homo erectus onwards, you'll also see fire employed. Someone already mentioned setting brush fires, but torches will also be used to drive game. Also, you'll see a certain amount of spear throwing (cheap, fire-hardened javelins, really). Two or three of them per hunter, sticking out of the prey's hide, intended to cause minor wounds, induce bleeding, and snag on brush as it tries to flee.
Agreed.

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Also remember that hominids, much like other predators, will target young, [old, and sick prey animals preferentially. They're easier.
Much harder to do vs. elephants (and presumably mammoth) as these individuals are normaly kept at the center of the herd. Far more likely to be attacking a jouvenile but not a baby, one that roams a bit further... it might even be worthwhile to target the bull, as it will usually be furtherest from the herd and more likely to signal the herd to retreat rather than to come to it's aid.... ofcourse this is all conjecture, I've personally never hunted anything larger than wild boar.
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Old 08-15-2011, 05:36 PM   #22
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Default Re: Mammoth vs. Stone Spears

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Some anthropologists have suggested that mammoth hunts were more for status than food.
Do you know if they find tools made from their bones? You wouldn't get many days' meat, maybe, but those skins and bones go a long way.

Also, I reckon if I got hungry enough for meat, I wouldn't care how much went to waste. It would depend on what else they were eating, I would suspect.
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Old 08-15-2011, 05:46 PM   #23
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Default Re: Mammoth vs. Stone Spears

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You can kill large megafauna with small weapons - Exhaust the prey and bleed it to death - but it's a lot of risk. And most of the meat on something like a mammoth will probably go to waste, since it's hard to preserve that much meat all at once. Some anthropologists have suggested that mammoth hunts were more for status than food.
That's possible. Mammoth hunts may also have been a bonding exercise during inter-clan or inter-tribal gatherings. Hunting them might be easier with 50 - 100 hunters, and the meat would be divided by the larger group. "The best place to store excess food is in your neighbor's stomach," and all that.

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Originally Posted by Trachmyr View Post
Much harder to do vs. elephants (and presumably mammoth) as these individuals are normaly kept at the center of the herd. Far more likely to be attacking a jouvenile but not a baby, one that roams a bit further... it might even be worthwhile to target the bull, as it will usually be furtherest from the herd and more likely to signal the herd to retreat rather than to come to it's aid.... ofcourse this is all conjecture, I've personally never hunted anything larger than wild boar.
Presumably, tactics would exist to split up the herd and cull a juvenile. I certainly wouldn't want to take on a full-sized, healthy bull elephant unless I was desperate or had a lot of friends :)
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Old 08-15-2011, 05:53 PM   #24
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Default Re: Mammoth vs. Stone Spears

If you're too hungry to care about what happens to the rest of the food, you're too hungry to hunt. You're better off checking your snares or seeing what you can scrounge up for roots and berries.

Yeah, there have been lots of finds of ceremonial items or tools made from mammoth bits. But a lot of that could have come from windfall rather than hunting. A tusk that's been cracked after a fall over a cliff is a lot less useful than an intact tusk you scavenged off an animal that died of old age. I'm not saying stone-age hunters wouldn't have gone after mammoths for food, but they wouldn't have done it often and they wouldn't have done it by running at the mammoth and hitting it with sticks.

I have a friend who was trained to hunt by an old Cree guy, a real old-school hunter. My friend is also an anthropologist. The main thing I learned from his hunting stories and explanations of survival-hunting versus sport-hunting is that when you're hunting for food, it pays to be lazy.

Lord carnifex - "That's possible. Mammoth hunts may also have been a bonding exercise during inter-clan or inter-tribal gatherings. Hunting them might be easier with 50 - 100 hunters, and the meat would be divided by the larger group. "The best place to store excess food is in your neighbor's stomach," and all that."

That's how the tribes hunted bison. Organizing the hunting parties was a major activity. Your place in the hunt was determined by skill, personal status, tribal status, and religious considerations. Pow-wows weren't just for dancing.
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Last edited by 0B1-KN0B; 08-15-2011 at 06:02 PM. Reason: Response to Lord Carnifex
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Old 08-15-2011, 05:54 PM   #25
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Default Re: Mammoth vs. Stone Spears

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Why are you digging a pit when cliffs are cheap and plentiful? The Blackfoot put zero effort into digging Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump.

And don't forget fire. A simple technique for plains hunting is to wait for favourable wind conditions, start a series of small fires, then run like hell. What a day or two for the fire to die down, and enjoy the buffet.

You can kill large megafauna with small weapons - Exhaust the prey and bleed it to death - but it's a lot of risk. And most of the meat on something like a mammoth will probably go to waste, since it's hard to preserve that much meat all at once. Some anthropologists have suggested that mammoth hunts were more for status than food.
Cliffs and fire. Even better then pits.

Though it is not clear why they would have time for status hunts if they were primitive hunter-gatherers. Sherpas never dreamed of trying to get to the top of mountains until told that rich Englishmen of doubtful sanity would pay for their help. Sherpas were not dependent on what they could hunt and thus had less need for unromantic practicality then hypothetical ice-age tribes would have.
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Old 08-15-2011, 06:01 PM   #26
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Default Re: Mammoth vs. Stone Spears

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Regarding the the hunters:

Spear-Thrower skill and a woomera + stone-tipped spear deals sw+3 imp (0.5) damage; that's both better damage than a two-handed thrust (1d+4 for ST 11 hunters versus 1d+2), and it allows them to attack at a distance.

Almost all of my RAW calculations in the other thread assumed a woomera + stone-tipped spear, because it's just about the best spear damage you can get.
I'm wondering if assuming the use of woomera is a good base line for determining the effectiveness of spears versus the larger megafauna.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but weren't woomeras indiginous to Australia, and even then only used in the desert regions where long shots were the norm?
Is there any evidence of other cultures having that tecnology (usually filled by the bow, a tech that was absent from Australia)?
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Old 08-15-2011, 06:07 PM   #27
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Default Re: Mammoth vs. Stone Spears

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I'm wondering if assuming the use of woomera is a good base line for determining the effectiveness of spears versus the larger megafauna.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but weren't woomeras indiginous to Australia, and even then only used in the desert regions where long shots were the norm?
Is there any evidence of other cultures having that tecnology (usually filled by the bow, a tech that was absent from Australia)?
If I remember they use a spear thrower and javelin, don't they? Or used to.
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Old 08-15-2011, 06:08 PM   #28
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Default Re: Mammoth vs. Stone Spears

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Originally Posted by Green-Neck View Post
Correct me if i'm wrong, but weren't woomeras indiginous to Australia, and even then only used in the desert regions where long shots were the norm?
Is there any evidence of other cultures having that tecnology (usually filled by the bow, a tech that was absent from Australia)?
Judging by a quick glance at Google Images, the woomera looks like a pretty typical spear-thrower. In some places in Africa, it's known as an atlatl. They're pretty common in mesolithic and neolithic sites, until (as you noted) they often are supplanted by the bow.
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Old 08-15-2011, 06:15 PM   #29
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Default Re: Mammoth vs. Stone Spears

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Yeah, there have been lots of finds of ceremonial items or tools made from mammoth bits. But a lot of that could have come from windfall rather than hunting. A tusk that's been cracked after a fall over a cliff is a lot less useful than an intact tusk you scavenged off an animal that died of old age. I'm not saying stone-age hunters wouldn't have gone after mammoths for food, but they wouldn't have done it often and they wouldn't have done it by running at the mammoth and hitting it with sticks.
The major bit of evidence I'm going off of here is the suggestion in the paleontological and archeological record that within 10,000 years after the first hominids arrived in North America, most of the megafauna were extinct. Now, one can blame climate change, ecological shifts, and other factors for it and it's fuzzy just how large the human role in the mass extinction was, but the easy conclusion is "humans show up, mammoths disappear quickly."
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Old 08-15-2011, 06:22 PM   #30
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Default Re: Mammoth vs. Stone Spears

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LTC3, p. 33, actually suggests that you can't build a wooden roof that spans the required distance without supports in the middle of the pit, at which point you're building an underground home rather than digging up a pit trap.
Why are you digging a pit when cliffs are cheap and plentiful? The Blackfoot put zero effort into digging Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump.

And don't forget fire.
Well...
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Originally Posted by Seasong, exact same post
Finally, you can find a convenient cliff, start a forest fire, and use that to drive all kinds of game over the cliff for easy pickings later.
And really, it depends entirely on where you are. Cliffs are not plentiful everywhere, and a good path to run the prey to the cliff is not always present.
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