The First Spears
The Ancients
History Hit
4.7 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 15 June 2023
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
According to the work of today's guest, Dr Annemieke Milks, humans were using spears approximately 400,000 years ago. Thanks to fragments of wooden spears incredibly well preserved at sites like Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, and Schöningen in Germany, there's now evidence to show our early ancestors weren't just hunter gatherers, but skilled weapons users.
Together, Tristan and Annemieke dissect what the evidence actually shows, the speculation surrounding ancestors millions of years ago also using weapons, and how experimental archaeology holds the key to unlocking the secrets of our ancestors lives.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Ancients from History Hit, to listen to our whole podcast archive |
| 0:05.3 | all new episode ad free and to watch hundreds of history documentaries where you can download |
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| 0:16.8 | That's HistoryHit.com forward slash subscribe. |
| 0:30.4 | It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host. |
| 0:35.4 | And in today's episode, while we're talking all about the first known spears from the |
| 0:40.4 | archaeological record, we're going back a few hundred thousand years to a time when the |
| 0:47.2 | Andertal communities were prominent in Europe. We're going to be covering sites such as |
| 0:51.7 | Chechnya in Germany where archaeologists have uncovered incredibly well-preserved remains |
| 0:58.0 | of wooden spears from 300,000 years old. Now to talk all about these weapons and what we know |
| 1:05.6 | about these early spears so far. Well, I was delighted to head up to the University of Reading, |
| 1:11.8 | a couple of weeks back to interview the researcher Dr. Annemike Knöcks. Now Annemike, she's a world |
| 1:18.8 | expert when it comes to these early spears and she's also delved into the world of experimental |
| 1:25.0 | archaeology too. She and her team have been testing out replicas of these wooden spears, |
| 1:31.1 | seeing how they would have been most effectively used by these prehistoric communities for hunting. |
| 1:37.9 | This really was a great and fun chat to do. We had replicas in front of us as we talked. I really |
| 1:44.4 | do hope you enjoy and here's Annemike. Annemike, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. |
| 1:52.6 | It's really, really a pleasure to be here. Thank you. We've got in front of us this array of |
| 1:57.6 | artifacts when talking about these early spears. I did not realize that humans were using spears |
| 2:03.1 | hundreds of thousands of years ago. Yeah, it is actually extraordinary and the only reason |
| 2:09.2 | that we even know for sure that they were doing that is because we have a few sites that have |
| 2:15.1 | just extraordinary preservation of wood. Normally wood wouldn't preserve archaeologically, |
... |
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