Upper Paleolithic Hunting Tactics and Weapons in Western Europe

Abstract

There is extensive evidence of subsistence intensification by Upper Paleolithic people in Europe, particularly based on the records from Spain, France, Belgium, and Germany. In addition to diversifying their subsistence base wherever and whenever possible, Upper Paleolithic hunters made efficient use of landforms and developed new types of weapon-delivery systems to procure large numbers of herd game. In so doing, they seem to have preferentially chosen to inhabit regions with significant hills and valleys. This allowed them to channel game movements and to hinder or trap herds, thereby facilitating mass kills. Specific physical features (rivers, cliffs, gorges, box canyons, blind valleys, etc.) were of proven use especially to late Upper Paleolithic hunters in their planned, scheduled mass kills of such species as horse, reindeer, red deer, bison, and ibex. The most dynamic component of Upper Paleolithic technologies was weaponry. New types of weapon tips, shafts, hafts, and propulsion devices were developed at an everaccelerating rate throughout the Upper Paleolithic and into the Mesolithic, between at least 35,000-40,000 BP and ca. 7000 BP. Ch«losse Hills REINDEER, HORSES, BOVINES, SAIGAS REINDEER, HORSES, BOVINES, SAIGAS a. 8 85 s.

Megafaunal extinction in the late Quaternary and the global overkill hypothesis

“…The use of similar techniques has been reported for at least some indigenous Australians in pursuit of relatively small animals (Cosgrove & Allen 2001). Straus (1993) argues that a correlation between Upper Palaeolithic sites and regions with hills and canyons demonstrates the importance of relief to these peoples in the dispatch of large animals. On the world's flattest continent such opportunities are more limited and, having cornered concentrations of megafauna, early Australians would still have been faced with using wooden spears to kill animals that may have weighed several tonnes.…”

The Natufian hunting conundrum: spears, atlatls, or bows? musculoskeletal and armature evidence

“…to bow and arrow. It is perhaps more realistic to view weapon system diversity as enabling hunters to choose among tools appropriate for season, game species, topography, environmental situation (land vs water), and milieux (single vs communal hunt) [43]. What can we learn from gazelle behaviour, the favoured game of Natufians?…”

Rethinking the evidence for early horse domestication at Botai

“…For example, Botai’s location at a river crossing is consistent with wild equid hunting tactics that date back deep into the Pleistocene. At Paleolithic sites across Europe, entire bands of horses—either mostly-female harem groups, all-male bachelor bands, or both—were commonly ambushed alongside natural water features where they were more effectively trapped and slaughtered 46 . This strategy appears to have been employed by the earliest hominin horse hunters, dating back nearly a half million years or more 47 , 48 .…”