A stone's throw away
UNT Geography's Dr. Reid Ferring has been conducting research at the Dmanisi archaeological site for decades, searching for answers to questions about human evolution in fossils, rocks, and now stones. In a recent interview with Paul Salopek of National Geographic, and in our monthly spotlight, Ferring shares with us the new twist his research is taking.
"I have learned over the years that one has to be very careful talking to journalists. So, I was typically cautious when Paul Salopek and I walked around Dmanisi, and later when we sat down to talk about my research there. He really jumped on the work I am doing on stone throwing, and I was very concerned that he should report a "work in progress" rather than firm conclusions. I got something in between." For Salopek's full story "Out of Eden", http://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/18/pleistocene-pitch....
"The reason I am looking at the possibility of stone throwing at Dmanisi is part of my general interest in a question which many paleoanthropologists sidestep.
How is it that 4 1/2 feet tall, 75 to 80 pound people can survive on a landscape that is crawling with huge, fast carnivores?
Paleoanthropologists have written volumes on the meat our ancestors ate, but only paragraphs about how they got that meat. Indeed, we have few clues as to how they could acquire meat on a reliable basis. I think that they survived the way our more recent ancestors did: as armed groups of adults that hunted or stole from carnivores, or possibly both. But there are no artifacts from this time that can be identified as weapons. The problem is to show that those stones were used as projectiles rather than for making sharp stone tools or for breaking bones or, for that matter, if they were deposited naturally. My analysis of the cobbles from Dmanisi is now addressing these alternative explanations. And even if I cannot demonstrate unequivocally that the stones were weapons, I will have made an attempt at the best site that I know of for such an inquiry."
Were carnivores just a stone's throw away? Stay tuned…
" Artist's Depiction of Dmanisi Hominins protecting a deer carcass by throwing stones at the menacing Hyenas" from: National Geographic Magazine, April 2005