{"id":871827,"date":"2026-10-05T17:32:47","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T17:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/871827\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T17:32:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T17:32:47","slug":"ice-age-spear-points-tell-a-fascinating-story-of-human-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/871827\/","title":{"rendered":"Ice Age Spear Points Tell a Fascinating Story of Human Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine you\u2019re suddenly transported to the wilderness, hundreds of miles from civilization, with nothing other than what you\u2019re carrying with you right now. The way you view your personal effects would likely change drastically. With no cell towers or electricity, your cherished phone is useless, the money in your wallet is only good for fire tinder, but the drawstring on your sweatpants could be used as a fishing line, or maybe a snare to catch dinner.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The value we place on things is contingent on our circumstances and subject to change as they do. Anthropologists from the University of Mississippi and the University of Alabama recently demonstrated this in a study<\/a> of stone spear tips belonging to two groups of hunter-gatherers who settled in the Tennessee River Valley during different time periods.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more: \u201cThe Emergence of a Deadly Hunting Technology in Prehistoric North America<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

The Clovis people were the first humans to settle in the region around 13,200 years ago. As strangers in a strange land, it\u2019s likely they were more uncertain where to source the sedimentary rock they needed to fashion weapons. That\u2019s probably why their stone spear tips showed signs of resharpening, the researchers say.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hang on to stuff today, but when we\u2019re talking about mobile hunter-gatherers, they had a different understanding and worldview when it came to personal possessions,\u201d study co-author Jesse Tune of the University of Mississippi said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cSpear points were designed to be disposable objects, and that makes what the Clovis were doing interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several hundred years later, the Cumberland people settled in the same area and their stone spear points told a different story. Instead of resharpened tips, the researchers found usable spear points that had been discarded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So what made the Cumberland people relatively more wasteful? According to the team, they likely learned where the rock came from their Clovis forebears, which made carrying spear points around less valuable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you think about a people who are moving around a lot, understand that they didn\u2019t have any pack animals,\u201d study co-author Shane Miller of the University of Alabama explained. \u201cYou really don\u2019t want to be carrying around a bag of rocks, and so you\u2019re going to be judicious about balancing what you need versus what you can carry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fast forward several thousand years and as we\u2019ve pushed the frontiers of exploration, we\u2019ve left disposable tools our ancient ancestors couldn\u2019t dream of in places they never imagined visiting. In fact, there are six high-tech landers gathering moon dust on the lunar surface right now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s something that\u2019s not lost on the researchers. \u201cThere really is no difference between Ice Age hunter-gatherers and the people sending missions and rovers to Mars,\u201d Tune said. \u201cWe\u2019re moving into an area, deciding what to take with us, learning the resources and slowly expanding. It\u2019s the exact same process.\u201d \"\"<\/p>\n

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Lead Image: Kevin Bain\/Ole Miss Digital Imaging Services<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imagine you\u2019re suddenly transported to the wilderness, hundreds of miles from civilization, with nothing other than what you\u2019re…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":871828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-871827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}