{"id":2890,"date":"2014-08-27T14:02:11","date_gmt":"2014-08-27T19:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=2890"},"modified":"2014-08-27T11:20:43","modified_gmt":"2014-08-27T16:20:43","slug":"stone-tipped-spears-cause-more-damage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/stone-tipped-spears-cause-more-damage\/","title":{"rendered":"Stone-tipped spears cause more damage"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2887\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Calibrated-Crossbow-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2887\" class=\"wp-image-2887 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Calibrated-Crossbow-1-300x232.jpg\" alt=\"Calibrated Crossbow (1)\" width=\"300\" height=\"232\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Calibrated-Crossbow-1-300x232.jpg 300w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Calibrated-Crossbow-1.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2887\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This crossbow was used to fire both stone-tipped and wooden-tipped spears into bags of ballistics-grade gelatin. (Photo credit: Jayne Wilkins, Wilkins et al., 2014)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">It\u2019s long been assumed that stone-tipped spears &#8211; the earliest examples of which appeared about 500,000 years ago &#8211; were a technological advance, but a new paper actually puts this theory to the test. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Researchers used a cross-bow to fire wooden-tipped and stone-tipped spears into blocks of ballistics-grade gelatin. While both penetrated to a similar depth, the stone-tipped spears left a larger wound cavity, causing more damage\u00a0and most likely would kill animals (or enemies) more quickly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The stone-tipped spears caused more damage, indicating that they did indeed represent a technological advancement.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.plos.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0105963\" target=\"_blank\"><span>Original research paper<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in <em>PLoS ONE\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>August 27, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Ben Schoville, Arizona State University, U.S.A.<\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s long been assumed that stone-tipped spears &#8211; the earliest examples of which appeared about 500,000 years ago &#8211; were a technological advance, but a new paper actually puts this theory to the test. Researchers used a cross-bow to fire wooden-tipped and stone-tipped spears into blocks of ballistics-grade gelatin. While both penetrated to a similar [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2887,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[917,1011],"class_list":["post-2890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-evolution","tag-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Calibrated-Crossbow-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-KC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2891,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890\/revisions\/2891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}