Quote:How come we at 50,000 years "all of a sudden" became truly sapient and could abstract, ponder and reason?
Now, you are moving into my field, lad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6ningen_Spears
Quote:The Schöningen Spears are 8 wooden throwing spears from the Palaeolithic Age, that were found under the management of Dr. Hartmut Thieme from the Lower Saxony State Service for Cultural Heritage (NLD) between 1994 and 1998 in the open-cast lignite mine, Schöningen, county Helmstedt, Germany, together with approx. 16,000 animal bones. More than 300,000 years old,[1][2][3][4] they are the oldest completely preserved hunting weapons in the world and they are regarded as the first evidence of the active hunt by Homo heidelbergensis. These discoveries have permanently changed the picture of the cultural and social development of early man.
Quote:They have been worked very thoroughly and are evidence of highly developed technological skills and of workmanlike tradition. Like in today’s tournament javelins, the greatest diameter and therefore its centre of gravity is in the front third of the shaft. The tips are worked symmetrically from the base of the stems, the end of the tips were worked beside the medullary ray, the weakest part of the stem, on purpose.
In their throwing qualities, the wooden Schoeningen spears are equal to today’s tournament javelins. During tests, athletes could throw true to original replicas up to 70 metres.
Contrast if you would the bolded portion of your post with the bolded portions of the web site. These javelins were not fashioned by some grunting ape. There is an obvious understanding of aerodynamics - even if they did not understand it as such.
