Friday, November 9, 2012

Weapons are what made us human

The gun is civilization, right?  This may have scientific backing:
Boffins investigating a find of ancient stone blades over 70 thousand years old argue that it was possession of advanced ranged weapons - and the organisation to make and use them - which allowed humanity to defeat its early rivals and spread out to conquer the world.

...

"These early moderns probably also had higher levels of pro-social (hyper-cooperative) behavior. These two traits were a knockout punch. Combine them, as modern humans did and still do, and no prey or competitor is safe," he adds. "This probably laid the foundation for the expansion out of Africa of modern humans and the extinction of many prey as well as our sister species such as Neanderthals."

...

The group's paper has thus made it into hefty boffinry mag Nature, where subscribers can read it here. There's also a free digest for laymen courtesy of Arizona State uni here.
I'm certain that none of this will come as a surprise to readers here.  It likely will be a surprise to the sort that reads Nature.  Hey - the science is settled!  Peer-reviewed, even.  What, are you some sort of Denier?

2 comments:

bluesun said...

So... you could say that we're... using their own weapons against them? Heh.

K said...

Col. Cooper: Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons.

Kerodin
III