Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
hunted or scavenged, though that is only one of many recent theories
put forward.
27
J. Desmond Clark of Berkeley has suggested their use as
bark-stripping tools, to allow feeding on the cambium layer of trees;
others have proposed a digging scenario, the point being to extract plant
roots, water, or burrowing animals. The idea has also been put forward
that hand axes were designed for myriad diverse uses, such as cutting,
digging, scraping, hammering, and chopping. Hand axes in this view
were the Swiss Army Knives of the Paleolithic.
28
Evolutionary psychologists have also thrown their hats into the ring.
In spring 1998, University of Reading archaeologist Steven Mithen pro-
posed that hand axes might actually be sexual lures, bragging points
made by men to attract the opposite sex, the Ferraris or Armani suits of
an earlier age. The rather macho (yet thin) theory here is that females
were attracted to handsome stone-ax makers, thereby causing those who
made the more perfect forms to leave more offspring.
29
This could pre-
sumably help explain why many of the hand axes found in different parts
of the world never seem to have been used (there is often no edge wear).
30
It might also explain why some sites contain more such tools than you
would seem to need—in some cases, thousands scattered over a very
small area. (Or perhaps it is a symptom of the fact that there aren't
many feminists in paleoanthropology?) The theory is part of Mithen's
larger view that the rise of modern consciousness involved a (relatively
recent) onset of communication between different parts of the brain—
“multitasking”—from which we get art, language, religion, and the rest
of the show.
31
Based on earlier studies by Eileen O'Brien, the neurobiologist William
Calvin has argued that the tools might have been
thrown
at animals
gathered around a water hole as an effective hunting strategy (as “killer
frisbees”).
32
The idea here is that the teardrop shape would force a
thrown hand ax into a vertically spinning path, which could be made to
terminate on, say, the back or rump of an antelope at a water hole. The
sharpened edges of the ax would allow it to stick into the animal, induc-
ing a pain-induced flexion response (magnifying how the animal would
normally act in response to a thornbush) and causing it to duck or sit
down. As the commotion spread in the herd, the animal might then
stumble and be trampled, allowing the hunters to rush in and dispatch
the animal. Calvin points out that other shapes would work to a lesser
degree, but that hunters would eventually learn that the bifacially
