| Bruno |
05-26-2013 10:26 AM |
Re: Martial arts for and against Neanderthals
Quote:
Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos
(Post 1585806)
However, in a TL3 setting living with humans who could teach them how to throw a spear and having high quality spears compared to TL0 ones, it would be easier for them to learn.
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It's not an issue of "too stupid to throw things" - it's an issue of "anatomically not well designed to throw things" and possibly "missing the neurological visual post-processing areas necessary to throw accurately".
All the great apes and lots of monkeys throw things. They're also generally really innacurate and (for their strength and arm length) weak throwers, due to the structural design of the wrist (and to a lesser extent the fingers and thumb).
The cock of the wrist and snap of it at the arc of the throw with the spear gives it the speed, the way you release your grip gives the spin for accuracy, and you have to be able to contort your wrist the right way to throw the spear pointy-end forwards, rather than sort of slipshod diagonal.
Throwing things is even more fascinating a problem, because signals from the brain to release the object can't technically arrive in your hand by the time you need to release it; there's a whole lot of forward anticipation and planning in throwing things effectively.
Humans appear to be unusually well designed and wired up for the ability to throw complex things (like spears and throwing sticks), never mind our fabulous ability to throw small roundish objects like rocks and baseballs. There's really no question that we've evolved adaptations to make ourselves better at it than, say, austrolapithicus, but there's reasonably good anatomical evidence that we outpace even close relatives, like Neandertals. Possibly we had to specialize a little in chucking, being less robust than them and thus not quite as well equipped to go toe-to-toe with a mammoth. |