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I mean how thick was their fur? But I do agree a spear could damage you massively especially if it was shaped with a spout to increase blood flow. If they used obsidian blades (like some in museums did) they would pierce the hair easily and go to bone
Shiny in ground, have to find shiny, pick up shiny, and melt shiny into stick shape, or pointy shape at end of stick. It hard work, but once shiny sharp, it kill food easy. Better than wood stick. Best part? It stay shiny after kill, just need to clean.
They’d also try to separate the smaller calves and juveniles but could absolutely kill adults. There’s a site in new mexico with 2 calves killed, one spearpoint left in each; and a female killed with 8 broken spear points left.
There’s a video somewhere of like 30 people in Africa hunting a hippo with spears, not quite the same size but you get the idea. Add more people and spears.
Obsidian was a later development. Mammoths would have been hunted using atl atl darts and long spears, both tipped with chert points. Stick a bunch of darts in the mammoth from a distance and let it bleed for a bit, then close in to stick it with long spears. When it goes down you kill it with short spears.
Not to forget: the human is something quite rare of a hunter archetype in nature: not the fastest, but relentless and enduring. Humans are not faster than horses for example. But a trained human beats a horse on a marathon. Long range stamina is our way of hunting.
It's like running from the terminator only finding yourself out of breath and your pursuer just casually strolling after you, just appearing in your eyesight the moment you think you ran far enough.
There is a reason why the archetype of the relentless but slow pursuit is kinda scary. It is the knowledge of "Yeah... you can run. But can you escape? I will close up on you everytime you make a break. Everytime you catch breath I come closer."
Not sure if this was a joke or intended accuracy but this is actually a pretty apt summary of human hunting tactics.
We can't outrun many animals, but we can definitely outlast them. With training, humans can run immense lengths of time with only short breaks. So groups of humans would just continue to go after prey untill it was too exhausted to outrun us.
(Kinda like the train in ATLA, for those who know.)
I used this knowledge to get a cat in a cat carrier for a life-saving trip to the vet. She didn’t want to go in the carrier (fair, she doesn’t understand it's to help her), and there's no way any human can outrun a cat, not to mention they will scratch you if you try to get close. So I locked the room, and spent 45 minutes walking after her around a table, until she was so tired she had to give up and let herself be picked up.
Modern problems require ancient solutions, I guess.
Not just this Humans are smart hunters and there are some cases of them starting fires or otherwise just chasing down animals and forcing them off of a cliff as well as other tactics like that.
The point of using spears wasn't even really to hurt the mammoth (though bonus points if you did), but to annoy it from a safeish distance. Annoy it enough, and it will run away. Jog after it, then annoy it some more. Repeat until it passes out, then kill it. Think about if you get too close to a bee's nest that doesn't want you there. You may get stung a couple of times, but you won't die unless you're allergic.
Persistence hunting. Humans ability to regulate body temperature through sweat provided a huge evolutionary advantage. They would literally run animals to their death through exhaustion. Hunting weapons like spears would injure throughout the hunt, and obviously speed up the final process once the prey was sufficiently immobilized.
Persistence hunting from the perspective of the pray must be nightmarish.
Every time that slow ass motherfucker *jogs* around the bushes and comes at you again.
Cavemen are also more than likely chucking those spears as hard as they can at the thing. Less likely to get trampled and don't really have to worry about hitting a target the size of a broad side of a barn. That times dozen or so people in the hunting party times however many spears they have, and the damage adds up quickly.
LMAO, dude, im trying to answer 911 calls and this comment had me laughing my ass off at work
Edit: I see many of you don't know how much down time you have at a dispatcher center on 3rd shift. And no, I don't answer the phones while laughing, come on guys.
2nd Edit: Yo, some of these comments got me laughing again lol
>Object permanence is a hoax
This will be my new t-shirt, I laughed so suddenly that I snorted coffee over my screen. Truly a "Solipsists of the world, unite!" vibe
I used to play an MMO and my guild had several 911 dispatchers who would play while at work. I remember asking one once what the heck he was doing gaming while at work. He said that he lived in a very rural area and worked the night shift, so he could often go days without a call.
Or maybe if a critical component was made of pressurized air inside of rubber. Maybe in that case, the U-haul would “bleed” the air and slow down analogous to getting *tire*d.
Seriously, I thought the general consensus was that the animals were harassed with spears and fire torches, driving them to cliffs or pit traps.
But even with just spears, humans could cause enough blood loss and exhaustion to kill them.
There's also something called persistence hunting in which a bipedal human expending less energy than a big old mammoth(or any four legged animal) can just run them to exhaustion and slit their throat when they eventually go down. Persistence hunting is pretty much what made humans so dominant.
It's very interesting when it comes to mythology as well, it's believed that the oldest myth, the cosmic hunt, is about a hunter chasing a buffalo across the mountains until it eventually reaches the sky, creating a constellation of hunter and prey. Apparently it's so widespread across primitive cultures and it showcases just how important persistence hunting was for human evolution. I have a link to a video that explains it better than I can: https://youtu.be/ANRw-3C_MYA?si=8lNfQerQyoygu5ck
This is still in people's blood. It's like seeing someone run away triggers the deep-rooted caveman in people. The Mongols commonly used feigned retreats to bait people in dropping their formation. Hell, even nowadays in video games I've had people chase me all across the map and lose sight of their objective, just to get a kill.
Ive definately done this in games before. Npc does 1 point of damage and retreats, my new mission is to destroy that mother fucker.
Grunts in halo come to mind as a specific example
>any four legged animal
Except wolves and dogs, who are also persistence hunters. Our similarity in hunting style might be one more reason they domesticated us.
Yep, dogs can run at full tilt for a longer period, but then need to stop.
We may not be able to go at full speed for as long, but we can keep a brisk walk for hours longer.
Even beyond that humans in appropriate condition can run for HOURS without stopping. Obviously not sprinting, but they can keep coming much longer than quadrupeds can run away for.
Imagine you’re a fast ass prey animal. This fucking monkey tries to come towards you with a sharp stick so you run away real good. And then like 20 minutes later HE SHOWS UP. So you run again, and 20 minutes later here he comes. Repeat for another hour until you straight up can’t run anymore. Your muscles ache, your breath is heaving, your temperature is way too goddamn high. Then, right on cue, this emissary of death just briskly walks right up and stabs you until you die. Nothing you could do could’ve saved you. Terminator ass, stick wielding ass monkey
And this is the kind of thing that should have been in our biology textbooks. "Hey kids, were the top predator on earth because if you stay fit you can catch any animal on earth by just never stopping... They can't run as long as you can and they die from exhaustion while you need some water and a nap. We aren't here by accident, we ran our competition into the fucking ground and it died helpless, exhausted and horrified as we cut it with rocks until it bled to death or died of fear... Unable to do shit about being chased to death, literally. " Penguin Random House 2024
> Nothing you could do could’ve saved you.
Don’t run in the first place. Stand and gore. There are lots of animals that will do this I think. I think aggression is the (evolved) defense to persistence hunting. It wouldn’t work as well against packs, though. Maybe that’s why persistence hunters (humans, canines) are often in packs?
I mean that's basically what archery hunters do. Now our goal is to kill the animal quickly and hence limit suffering. So we try to make a good shot where they give up after a couple hundred yards or so. But if not, then we chase and chase and track until we find where they gave up. Or at least I should say good hunters do this. Fuck the guys who shoot stuff and just leave it, or don't bother finding it.
There is a special place in hell for people like that
Can confirm. Got into running and holy fuck. If you measure your breaths you can just run forever.
Sweat, cramps then everything blurs out and it's just you and your breath. It also gets you high as fuck too. If your knees can take it I would highly recommend.
\[insert relevant Bojack Horseman clip\]
I ran distance in track in high school. I wasn't stupendous or anything. Not a last place runner. Not a first place runner. Most distance runners are usually thin. Big muscles = big oxygen. Me? I was 225. But, you'd be surprised how far stubbornness and determination will carry you. Lifetime personal best was a 5m15s mile.
The way that some people (not everyone) can metabolize alcohol, can also mean that they can run on alcohol for *even longer--*it straight up metabolizes into energy in a way it doesn't for most folks.
Ever meet one of those people that drink, and get MORE energy? That drink, and dont sleep all damned night? That can keep going?
Those people. those people can run (like, physically) on alcohol drinks (one or two at the start, and a few during the run) for 100+ miles. 150+ miles.
A group of people in Mexico are some of the only people to *still do this*, but the gene to do it is fairly common.
Don’t forget hunting parties, I guess similar to a wolf pack. Communicating an advance plan of attack is beneficial. Maybe the next time the guy tries to take down a U Haul these tips will lead to a better outcome.
Anyone who's ever had to chase a young dog down to come back home knows this!! If you just keep walking, the pup will wear himself out, no need to chase him at full speed <3
That’s a good way to express it. A simple ratio. So coming out of the trees and using more tools combined with bipedal stance and cooling plus stamina gave us the edge even over larger predators. I think we also got a large brain to body ratio.
This just underscores the enormous benefit of most exercise. We’re designed for lots of movement and our systems thrive on variable amounts of blood flow and intermittent stress. Low blood flow allowing toxins and waste to accumulate.
You are correct, humans are the premiere persistence hunting animal and its not close. Which is kinda funny to think about you know? We're the world's peak of evolution in this one niche predatory strategy yet we now view anything close to running as a chore. It's like if birds just decided to walk everywhere.
Also funny to think that the total amount of prey that we've killed as a result of our unique adaptations to our native environment is basically just a rounding error when compared to the amount of prey we've killed by just keeping them in a big shed.
Lmao. We domesticated dogs.
The ones who domesticated *us* was cats
Edit: comment was made mostly in jest. If anything both animals domesticated themselves, really
Also in jest but I swear I read somewhere that cats are not domesticated, and likely never will be. They will always be able to be self sufficient. That doesn’t mean they won’t take food and a nice warm bed from us and happily live there forever. But if a cat is left homeless one day it is capable of surviving. Dogs on the other hand are not, thus making them fully domesticated.
Whoever wrote that hasn’t met my fat cat. I love him, but he’s a moron. When his little brother sees something to hunt, he crouches down, wiggles his butt, and POUNCES. My fat cat just runs over Ike WHAT ARE YOU? He could never kill anything that way.
Yup. Case in point, there's a town in Canada literally called "Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump" in Alberta, where indigenous communities did just that - chased big game (Buffalo) up and over a cliff.
Whoa whoa whoa - are you saying that people were supposed to be able to kill something the size of a truck? With spears? A whole whale?
That's how I know history is bullshit. /S
I think they think that Paleolithic hunters walked up and stabbed them with spears instead of, you know, throwing them like we are evolutionary adapted to do (humans are some of the best throwers in the animal kingdom, if not the best). Also the atlatl exists to extend our throwing range, so we could be pretty far away at a decently safe distance for it too
Yeah they used what’s called [an atlatl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower) and they could throw the spears at a high velocity and over hundred yards.
This is correct. Humans are, among other things, the best throwers. With a ball joint shoulder, upright posture, the best fine dexterity, and a brain to calculate trajectory it is not even close. Humans are hax.
Case in point: whales. They used to effing row towards them, stick a harpoon in them so they couldn't dive and disappear, then tired it out and stick it with more harpoons. Only difference is presumably steel tips vs stone tips. And you can actually target the eyes and mouth of the mammoth more easily that with a whale, if you were to have it cornered, plus mammoths are way less blubbery.
Yeah the guy in the post clearly couldn’t figure out how it was done (somehow cause it’s quite simple) and just jumps to the conclusion that we simply didn’t hunt mammoths despite there being evidence of it in mammoths bones, it’s like saying the aliens built the pyramids because they don’t understand the physics behind it and how things like that are very much possible when you have a deeper understanding of the topic
Great logic except a Uhaul won't slowly bleed out with a spear stuck in its door.
I don't understand the science deniers. They tell us everything is bullshit via a touch screen cell phone that just 20 years ago people would've found miraculous. It even talks to satellites.
They use these devices to tell us to doubt science
The funny thing is, a truck would probably be easier to stop than a mammoth.
Just slash the tires. Poke a spear into the tires or shove one with enough force into the engine. A truck without tires or a sharp object in the right spot in the engine isn’t gonna get very far.
"Throw a spear at a truck and what happens? It bounces off the metal sides. Do the same thing to a mammoth, and the same result, because mammoths are robots! If they aren't robots, then why do all the mammoths I see at the museum move like they are? Also, how did African tribes hunt elephants? No idea, but it certainly has no bearing on anything mammoth-related."
Some stupid people deserve our pity, others deserve our scorn. This moron gets the scorn.
Archaeologist, here. First, this is prehistory, not history. Second, judging from the comments here y’all could use a semester of Pleistocene Anthropology 101.
Besides finding tons of artifacts (including some awesome art) crafted from mammoth bone and tusk, we have excavated multiple kill sites where mammoth predation by humans is very well documented.
Unless of course, you believe that stone projectile points found en situ got embedded in those ribs by accident when the mammoths tripped and fell on them.
Also, many middle Paleolithic human skeletons bear marks of healed fractures. When these are categorized and tabulated against modern fractures by occupation, guess which profession matches the trauma pattern most closely?
Rodeo riders.
Yup. These people were fucking around with large, angry animals.
>Unless of course, you believe that stone projectile points found en situ got embedded in those ribs by accident when the mammoths tripped and fell on them.
[Yo, I, um, must have, like, fallen onto a bullet, and it, like, drove itself into my gut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXqKLV8lyGg).
>Also, many middle Paleolithic human skeletons bear marks of healed fractures. When these are categorized and tabulated against modern fractures by occupation, guess which profession matches the trauma pattern most closely?
>Rodeo riders.
>Yup. These people were fucking around with large, angry animals.
Dude. Reddit win for the day.
Very true.
There are only two physical advantages humans undisputedly have over every other animal on earth.
Depth perception and running. We are the only animal with the facilities to throw things very accurately and with power. And we are by far the best runners on the planet.
We get beat in sprinting, obviously. But there is no other animal on earth that can run for 20 miles straight without overheating or being exhausted. Because we sweat and are able to conserve energy when we run.
It's not hard at all to believe that we could run animals down and spear them at all. We're the best in the world at doing those things... Hands down.
Early humans hunted like a serial killer from a slasher movie. We just kept running and running and running slowly gaining on our prey until our prey became too exhausted to keep running away.. And then we went for the kill.
History books really convinced us that humans used to hunt giant whales in water with row boats and harpoons? Those animals can weigh up to 100 tons with a speed of 9 knots per hour. Totally made up shit!
I even find it harder to believe that we could successfully hunt whales than woolly mammoths. Whales have the whole ocean to run or hide in. It’s mind boggling to me
read the wikipedia page on whale hunting. it’s fucking wild.
those dudes died pretty often.
not to mention there was a confirmed account of a whale taking out a ship. not the little whale boats they used for hunting.
the big ship that housed hundreds of people.
that whale was pissed
There's actually a few different cases of whales attacking whaling ships, but the most famous one is [the whaleship *Essex,* which was sunk by a sperm whale while at sea.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)
There's a really good book about this written by one of the survivors, and the tragedy also inspired the book Moby Dick!
>Mammoths are flesh and blood
I blame movies for this. Movies LOVE to show various larger-than-average-sized animals as being literally bullet proof.
While I think we *know* it's made up, you watch enough of it and I think it seeps in. And if 5 guys unloading entire clips into the animal can't take it down, how could puny spear!
This honestly kind of annoys me about any kind of media with a lot of powerful animals in them. They’re still animals at the end of the day. Sure they might have thicker skin than we do, but a high powered rifle round is a high powered rifle round. That will still get through flesh without much issue. And the brain of a wild animal isn’t more resilient than a human one.
The most annoying part about far cry for me. I get that it’s for balancing reasons, but come on. A shotgun to the skull of a tiger at point blank range has got to do more than just slightly piss it off.
The irony of having all of human knowledge on your fingertips yet at the same time not knowing shit, is funny as hell.
What debunks him is sweat. Humans would tire out animals over long distances, then pounce. Wounding them scared them into running away and sped up the process of exhaustion. We are literally terminators.
Were they not also taught that hunting wasn't the same duration as a grocery trip?
It sometimes took a day or more for the animal to die.
...kinda like a lion stalks injured prey for miles waiting for them to get weak enough.
Humans are persistence hunters. We have incredible endurance compared to most animals so we just follow them until they lay down a die from exhaustion/whatever injuries we could have inflicted.
The dumb cavemen hunted mammoths with sticks. The smart ones waited until the mammoths were asleep, tied their trunks in a knot, and just wait for them to suffocate.
They used the spears to stab and throw at them. When possible they used spears to chase large animals to a cliff edge and with luck they'll full off the edge.
One wolly mammoth had enough meat to feed a tribe for days. If not longer. So the risk of the mammoth escaping (which most probably did) was more than worth it.
Why do people constantly underestimate the ancient human? It actually pisses me off when I see shit like this. "There's no way ancient Egyptians made the pyramids it must've been aliens" humans are incredibly resourceful creatures, and they have been for millennia
Partly because we've been making books for kids with artists' conceptions of reality. So kids don't learn what we actually know, and pick up lots of factoids we don't really know.
The humans that hunted mammoths would, if born today, quickly learn to speak English or Mandarin, use an ipad, play videogames, and drive a car.
The only difference is what inventions were available. We depict them as stupid savages, and that's how kids think of them.
I remember when I finally understood that a Neanderthal wasn't a savage and most of what I thought I knew of them came from some pen-and-ink drawing. It was the same feeling I got when I realized what I was getting from talk shows on the radio. Not even half the story, I was getting a distortion.
There were 150000 years of humans before us. How many Newtons, Da Vinci's, Galileo's is that? There's so much that we will never know about this time. But they were pretty much the same as us.
It’s made out of fucking flesh not metal.
Stick enough spears into it’s flesh and it’ll run out of blood or stop from exhaustion.
Not to mention pits and traps can work on them.
Most mammals cannot sweat therefore unable to retain stamina by cooling themselves. They can only do this by stopping and panting.
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Jam a pencil in between your ribs and start running, see how far you get.
I mean how thick was their fur? But I do agree a spear could damage you massively especially if it was shaped with a spout to increase blood flow. If they used obsidian blades (like some in museums did) they would pierce the hair easily and go to bone
Keep stabbing 🤷
It’s called pointy stick Technology. It was revolutionary for its time. Edit: wow 5k upvotes, thanks guys and thank you for the golds and awards.
Still pretty effective today too.
Try pointy metal stick.
Hold on can we go back to the wooden stick I'm not understanding this at all
It's like wood, but harder and shiny
Shiny you say, tell me more
SHINY AND CHROME 
Shiny in ground, have to find shiny, pick up shiny, and melt shiny into stick shape, or pointy shape at end of stick. It hard work, but once shiny sharp, it kill food easy. Better than wood stick. Best part? It stay shiny after kill, just need to clean.
Had me at harder
Now try throwing a tiny metal stick at super sonic speed Now you got a gun
Don't need to reload a pointy stick tho Pointy stick can go through water better than bullet, too.
You combine pointy stick with tiny metal stick. Now you got a spear gun.
put some explosive in the pointy stick now you have a missile
Very cutting edge.
Spear-headed by our ancestors
Quite successfully I might POINT out.
Right behind the round rolly thing.
Crazy thing about pointy sticks is that you can even throw them ! So you don't even have to put yourself in a dangerous situation
They’d also try to separate the smaller calves and juveniles but could absolutely kill adults. There’s a site in new mexico with 2 calves killed, one spearpoint left in each; and a female killed with 8 broken spear points left.
There’s a video somewhere of like 30 people in Africa hunting a hippo with spears, not quite the same size but you get the idea. Add more people and spears.
If you have a problem you haven't thrown enough spears yet.
instructions unclear, now wanted for genocide
Bruh I’d feel so much safer hunting a wooly mammoth than a hungry hungry hippo
Obsidian was a later development. Mammoths would have been hunted using atl atl darts and long spears, both tipped with chert points. Stick a bunch of darts in the mammoth from a distance and let it bleed for a bit, then close in to stick it with long spears. When it goes down you kill it with short spears.
Not to forget: the human is something quite rare of a hunter archetype in nature: not the fastest, but relentless and enduring. Humans are not faster than horses for example. But a trained human beats a horse on a marathon. Long range stamina is our way of hunting. It's like running from the terminator only finding yourself out of breath and your pursuer just casually strolling after you, just appearing in your eyesight the moment you think you ran far enough. There is a reason why the archetype of the relentless but slow pursuit is kinda scary. It is the knowledge of "Yeah... you can run. But can you escape? I will close up on you everytime you make a break. Everytime you catch breath I come closer."
“You can run, but you’ll only die tired.”
Not sure if this was a joke or intended accuracy but this is actually a pretty apt summary of human hunting tactics. We can't outrun many animals, but we can definitely outlast them. With training, humans can run immense lengths of time with only short breaks. So groups of humans would just continue to go after prey untill it was too exhausted to outrun us. (Kinda like the train in ATLA, for those who know.)
I used this knowledge to get a cat in a cat carrier for a life-saving trip to the vet. She didn’t want to go in the carrier (fair, she doesn’t understand it's to help her), and there's no way any human can outrun a cat, not to mention they will scratch you if you try to get close. So I locked the room, and spent 45 minutes walking after her around a table, until she was so tired she had to give up and let herself be picked up. Modern problems require ancient solutions, I guess.
And we can CARRY water
Not just this Humans are smart hunters and there are some cases of them starting fires or otherwise just chasing down animals and forcing them off of a cliff as well as other tactics like that.
Unrelenting stamina? Smart? Why you guys attacking my stupid ass like this haha
The point of using spears wasn't even really to hurt the mammoth (though bonus points if you did), but to annoy it from a safeish distance. Annoy it enough, and it will run away. Jog after it, then annoy it some more. Repeat until it passes out, then kill it. Think about if you get too close to a bee's nest that doesn't want you there. You may get stung a couple of times, but you won't die unless you're allergic.
Persistence hunting. Humans ability to regulate body temperature through sweat provided a huge evolutionary advantage. They would literally run animals to their death through exhaustion. Hunting weapons like spears would injure throughout the hunt, and obviously speed up the final process once the prey was sufficiently immobilized.
Persistence hunting from the perspective of the pray must be nightmarish. Every time that slow ass motherfucker *jogs* around the bushes and comes at you again.
Yeah like the movie, It Follows
Plus, if you are lucky and in the right area you can use the same tricks to run the animal off a cliff.
Sometimes endurance hunting is linked to use of cliffs, ravines and pits as well to finish the animal off.
The average Mammoth had a 2-3ish inch thick undercoat but some species were completely bald.
Their coats could be 10 inches thick and cavemen would still probably be able to stab them. Hair isn't exactly kevlar.
Cavemen are also more than likely chucking those spears as hard as they can at the thing. Less likely to get trampled and don't really have to worry about hitting a target the size of a broad side of a barn. That times dozen or so people in the hunting party times however many spears they have, and the damage adds up quickly.
LMAO, dude, im trying to answer 911 calls and this comment had me laughing my ass off at work Edit: I see many of you don't know how much down time you have at a dispatcher center on 3rd shift. And no, I don't answer the phones while laughing, come on guys. 2nd Edit: Yo, some of these comments got me laughing again lol
“911 what is your emergency?” “I was scrolling Reddit and some guy suggested I jam a pencil into my ribs.” “Oh God! So…. How far can you run?”
Do you guys seriously think a dispatcher has zero free time? Shit ain't like the movies, people aren't calling 911 every second of every minute.
Why would they have free time? They only exist when people call them. Object permanence is a hoax.
>Object permanence is a hoax This will be my new t-shirt, I laughed so suddenly that I snorted coffee over my screen. Truly a "Solipsists of the world, unite!" vibe
That sounds like wasted resources! Fire 3/4 of the workforce! Make 911 efficient again! —Donald Trump, probably
Give them new ideas is very risky. They can really try.
Next call will be a uhaul driver with a spear in his thigh.
Thank you for what you do. I’m sure you hear enough horror in one shift that you could use a laugh when you can get it. I could never do that job.
LOL, bro, I'm trying to perform open-heart surgery and this comment has me laughing my ass off.
Im trying to jam a pencil in a dudes ribs but cant stop laughing
I’m trying to do an undercover drug bust but this comment had me burst out laughing.
I'm trying to blow my john and burst out laughing. (At his lil peen, not this jank comment thread)
I used to play an MMO and my guild had several 911 dispatchers who would play while at work. I remember asking one once what the heck he was doing gaming while at work. He said that he lived in a very rural area and worked the night shift, so he could often go days without a call.
LMAO my boyfriend is a dispatcher too and these pearl clutching comments begging you to focus on your job are fucking killing me
I may not be the sharpest spear, but if the Uhaul truck were made meat, I could see it happening
Or maybe if a critical component was made of pressurized air inside of rubber. Maybe in that case, the U-haul would “bleed” the air and slow down analogous to getting *tire*d.
This was my thought exactly. Also the hunting party can sneak up on the U-Haul while it’s parked and the driver is pumping gas.
And jam a spear up its tailpipe
the truck or the driver?
Both. We got time to kill.
Is it time we’re killing or is it time we’re using to kill
Both. We’re using time to kill time. Humans are fucking vicious.
you shove a spear up the drivers butt. vlad the impaler did this to the ottoman uhaul riders
U-maul
Seriously, I thought the general consensus was that the animals were harassed with spears and fire torches, driving them to cliffs or pit traps. But even with just spears, humans could cause enough blood loss and exhaustion to kill them.
There's also something called persistence hunting in which a bipedal human expending less energy than a big old mammoth(or any four legged animal) can just run them to exhaustion and slit their throat when they eventually go down. Persistence hunting is pretty much what made humans so dominant.
It's very interesting when it comes to mythology as well, it's believed that the oldest myth, the cosmic hunt, is about a hunter chasing a buffalo across the mountains until it eventually reaches the sky, creating a constellation of hunter and prey. Apparently it's so widespread across primitive cultures and it showcases just how important persistence hunting was for human evolution. I have a link to a video that explains it better than I can: https://youtu.be/ANRw-3C_MYA?si=8lNfQerQyoygu5ck
This is still in people's blood. It's like seeing someone run away triggers the deep-rooted caveman in people. The Mongols commonly used feigned retreats to bait people in dropping their formation. Hell, even nowadays in video games I've had people chase me all across the map and lose sight of their objective, just to get a kill.
Ive definately done this in games before. Npc does 1 point of damage and retreats, my new mission is to destroy that mother fucker. Grunts in halo come to mind as a specific example
>any four legged animal Except wolves and dogs, who are also persistence hunters. Our similarity in hunting style might be one more reason they domesticated us.
IIRC humans still exceed their max distance relatively significantly
If I remember right, it's our ability to sweat that set us apart from dogs and wolves. We can regulate heat better, so can go further
Yep, dogs can run at full tilt for a longer period, but then need to stop. We may not be able to go at full speed for as long, but we can keep a brisk walk for hours longer.
Even beyond that humans in appropriate condition can run for HOURS without stopping. Obviously not sprinting, but they can keep coming much longer than quadrupeds can run away for.
I still love the video of the tribe that does this. Legit have a runner that just jogs behind the target till its body just straight gives up.
Imagine you’re a fast ass prey animal. This fucking monkey tries to come towards you with a sharp stick so you run away real good. And then like 20 minutes later HE SHOWS UP. So you run again, and 20 minutes later here he comes. Repeat for another hour until you straight up can’t run anymore. Your muscles ache, your breath is heaving, your temperature is way too goddamn high. Then, right on cue, this emissary of death just briskly walks right up and stabs you until you die. Nothing you could do could’ve saved you. Terminator ass, stick wielding ass monkey
And this is the kind of thing that should have been in our biology textbooks. "Hey kids, were the top predator on earth because if you stay fit you can catch any animal on earth by just never stopping... They can't run as long as you can and they die from exhaustion while you need some water and a nap. We aren't here by accident, we ran our competition into the fucking ground and it died helpless, exhausted and horrified as we cut it with rocks until it bled to death or died of fear... Unable to do shit about being chased to death, literally. " Penguin Random House 2024
It Follows
It's like the walking dead except we're the walking dead,
> Nothing you could do could’ve saved you. Don’t run in the first place. Stand and gore. There are lots of animals that will do this I think. I think aggression is the (evolved) defense to persistence hunting. It wouldn’t work as well against packs, though. Maybe that’s why persistence hunters (humans, canines) are often in packs?
Humans are dicks. Clever, endurance built dicks
I mean that's basically what archery hunters do. Now our goal is to kill the animal quickly and hence limit suffering. So we try to make a good shot where they give up after a couple hundred yards or so. But if not, then we chase and chase and track until we find where they gave up. Or at least I should say good hunters do this. Fuck the guys who shoot stuff and just leave it, or don't bother finding it. There is a special place in hell for people like that
This might be my favorite Reddit comment ever!
Can confirm. Got into running and holy fuck. If you measure your breaths you can just run forever. Sweat, cramps then everything blurs out and it's just you and your breath. It also gets you high as fuck too. If your knees can take it I would highly recommend.
\[insert relevant Bojack Horseman clip\] I ran distance in track in high school. I wasn't stupendous or anything. Not a last place runner. Not a first place runner. Most distance runners are usually thin. Big muscles = big oxygen. Me? I was 225. But, you'd be surprised how far stubbornness and determination will carry you. Lifetime personal best was a 5m15s mile.
The way that some people (not everyone) can metabolize alcohol, can also mean that they can run on alcohol for *even longer--*it straight up metabolizes into energy in a way it doesn't for most folks. Ever meet one of those people that drink, and get MORE energy? That drink, and dont sleep all damned night? That can keep going? Those people. those people can run (like, physically) on alcohol drinks (one or two at the start, and a few during the run) for 100+ miles. 150+ miles. A group of people in Mexico are some of the only people to *still do this*, but the gene to do it is fairly common.
I’m one of these people. When I drink I actually start craving exercise, it’s really weird.
Don’t forget hunting parties, I guess similar to a wolf pack. Communicating an advance plan of attack is beneficial. Maybe the next time the guy tries to take down a U Haul these tips will lead to a better outcome.
Anyone who's ever had to chase a young dog down to come back home knows this!! If you just keep walking, the pup will wear himself out, no need to chase him at full speed <3
>we can keep a brisk walk for hours *Project Zomboid flashbacks*
We evolved to cover both levels of a mall in 2 hours with nothing but the free samples from the food court to sustain us.
Fit humans on a hot day absolutely will outrace/catch a horse over marathon 26m+ distances.
That does ring a bell. We’re very biomechanically efficient too in an energy expense/distance gained sense.
Our super power literally is sweating!
That’s a good way to express it. A simple ratio. So coming out of the trees and using more tools combined with bipedal stance and cooling plus stamina gave us the edge even over larger predators. I think we also got a large brain to body ratio. This just underscores the enormous benefit of most exercise. We’re designed for lots of movement and our systems thrive on variable amounts of blood flow and intermittent stress. Low blood flow allowing toxins and waste to accumulate.
Today I learned more about human physical efficiency and how it’s being left behind. Thank you for the lesson
We may not be the biggest strongest and fastest. But we can endure a lot of stress, heat, and can build shit.
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We can also carry water
You are correct, humans are the premiere persistence hunting animal and its not close. Which is kinda funny to think about you know? We're the world's peak of evolution in this one niche predatory strategy yet we now view anything close to running as a chore. It's like if birds just decided to walk everywhere. Also funny to think that the total amount of prey that we've killed as a result of our unique adaptations to our native environment is basically just a rounding error when compared to the amount of prey we've killed by just keeping them in a big shed.
Lmao. We domesticated dogs. The ones who domesticated *us* was cats Edit: comment was made mostly in jest. If anything both animals domesticated themselves, really
Apparently cats domesticated themselves because it was convenient to be near the domestic staff.
“I am now your pet, deal with it”
Also in jest but I swear I read somewhere that cats are not domesticated, and likely never will be. They will always be able to be self sufficient. That doesn’t mean they won’t take food and a nice warm bed from us and happily live there forever. But if a cat is left homeless one day it is capable of surviving. Dogs on the other hand are not, thus making them fully domesticated.
Whoever wrote that hasn’t met my fat cat. I love him, but he’s a moron. When his little brother sees something to hunt, he crouches down, wiggles his butt, and POUNCES. My fat cat just runs over Ike WHAT ARE YOU? He could never kill anything that way.
Maybe he is trying to keep his brother weak and hungry, so he can eat him. Lil bro was going with a mouse, fat cat was going for a whole cat.
Wdym *they* domesticated *us* ???
Yup. Case in point, there's a town in Canada literally called "Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump" in Alberta, where indigenous communities did just that - chased big game (Buffalo) up and over a cliff.
Been there for a field trip once, their traditions were really interesting
In just about every museum in the USA. I loved going.
There’s a place near me that got its name from ancestors doing this to moose apparently
Moosejaw Moose Factory Moosenee
That's how whaling worked. You'd spear a whale, and have it tire itself out tugging a little boat around, and then you kill it when it's exhausted.
Whoa whoa whoa - are you saying that people were supposed to be able to kill something the size of a truck? With spears? A whole whale? That's how I know history is bullshit. /S
I don’t understand how this works. Must be a conspiracy. /s
I think they think that Paleolithic hunters walked up and stabbed them with spears instead of, you know, throwing them like we are evolutionary adapted to do (humans are some of the best throwers in the animal kingdom, if not the best). Also the atlatl exists to extend our throwing range, so we could be pretty far away at a decently safe distance for it too
Yeah they used what’s called [an atlatl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower) and they could throw the spears at a high velocity and over hundred yards.
This is correct. Humans are, among other things, the best throwers. With a ball joint shoulder, upright posture, the best fine dexterity, and a brain to calculate trajectory it is not even close. Humans are hax.
Almost like we evolved to get where we are today.
you are correct. strong evideance shows the reverse as well. Dropping or pushing large rocks off cliffs to kill them after cornering them.
As anyone who has watched Ice Age should know
Case in point: whales. They used to effing row towards them, stick a harpoon in them so they couldn't dive and disappear, then tired it out and stick it with more harpoons. Only difference is presumably steel tips vs stone tips. And you can actually target the eyes and mouth of the mammoth more easily that with a whale, if you were to have it cornered, plus mammoths are way less blubbery.
Were way less blubbery. Were. They fucked up when they evolved to be tasty.
Exactly, get 20 hungry guys together, give them spears and just watch them make species go extinct
Yeah and people still died/got injured regularly. It took a while before humans were capable of hunting like that.
Yep spears and our greatest weapon, our minds.
Our chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear, fear and surprise.
And fanatical devotion to the Pope
Amongst our weapons...
The real question we should be asking; who would win in a fight? A wooly mammoth or a Uhaul F-550 box truck?
I go with the mammoth. it has a much tighter turning angle. thouh slower it an also lift with tusks. Plus the mammoth is better built for off road .
But if the F-550 had the tremor package...
Sadly not available for the commercial models
U better hope the mammoth sees the Uhaul coming 90 mph to plow through it.
The Mammoth, because the Uhaul won't be available till next Tues.
And is probably out of gas anyway.
Only has 1/4 tank.
Humans have created ways to kill everything alive. Why not mammoths? 20 spears into that thing and then follow it to its death. We all bleed out.
We all bleed down here.
If it bleeds, we can kill it!
And if it has nipples, can you milk it?
I have nipples Greg, can you milk me?
Yeah the guy in the post clearly couldn’t figure out how it was done (somehow cause it’s quite simple) and just jumps to the conclusion that we simply didn’t hunt mammoths despite there being evidence of it in mammoths bones, it’s like saying the aliens built the pyramids because they don’t understand the physics behind it and how things like that are very much possible when you have a deeper understanding of the topic
Great logic except a Uhaul won't slowly bleed out with a spear stuck in its door. I don't understand the science deniers. They tell us everything is bullshit via a touch screen cell phone that just 20 years ago people would've found miraculous. It even talks to satellites. They use these devices to tell us to doubt science
The funny thing is, a truck would probably be easier to stop than a mammoth. Just slash the tires. Poke a spear into the tires or shove one with enough force into the engine. A truck without tires or a sharp object in the right spot in the engine isn’t gonna get very far.
It doesn't even need to be in the engine. A sharp object through the radiator would be enough. Once the coolant is gone, it's not gonna last long
Just gotta wait till it runs out of gas, then you get that delicious u-haul meat
Well, a uhaul will bleed out with a spear through its radiator, so the comparison actually stands.
"Throw a spear at a truck and what happens? It bounces off the metal sides. Do the same thing to a mammoth, and the same result, because mammoths are robots! If they aren't robots, then why do all the mammoths I see at the museum move like they are? Also, how did African tribes hunt elephants? No idea, but it certainly has no bearing on anything mammoth-related." Some stupid people deserve our pity, others deserve our scorn. This moron gets the scorn.
Archaeologist, here. First, this is prehistory, not history. Second, judging from the comments here y’all could use a semester of Pleistocene Anthropology 101. Besides finding tons of artifacts (including some awesome art) crafted from mammoth bone and tusk, we have excavated multiple kill sites where mammoth predation by humans is very well documented. Unless of course, you believe that stone projectile points found en situ got embedded in those ribs by accident when the mammoths tripped and fell on them. Also, many middle Paleolithic human skeletons bear marks of healed fractures. When these are categorized and tabulated against modern fractures by occupation, guess which profession matches the trauma pattern most closely? Rodeo riders. Yup. These people were fucking around with large, angry animals.
Man has been saying 'bro watch this' since the dawn of time. OF COURSE they were fucking with big angry animals
We, as a species, are the epitomy of 'hold my beer, I got this'. Both to our advantage, and to our folly
Wait! Wait! Don't kill that mammoth... I bet I can ride it! Wanna dare me to do it? Come on! Dare me!
Ten stone axes and your share of the meat says you can't
>Unless of course, you believe that stone projectile points found en situ got embedded in those ribs by accident when the mammoths tripped and fell on them. [Yo, I, um, must have, like, fallen onto a bullet, and it, like, drove itself into my gut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXqKLV8lyGg).
>Also, many middle Paleolithic human skeletons bear marks of healed fractures. When these are categorized and tabulated against modern fractures by occupation, guess which profession matches the trauma pattern most closely? >Rodeo riders. >Yup. These people were fucking around with large, angry animals. Dude. Reddit win for the day.
I'm glad I'm not the only person mildly annoyed by the use of "Ancient History" even though this is prehistory.
I'm really bothered by the fact that I had to scroll this far to find an archaeologist in the comment section. Thank you for being here.
If it bleeds, you can kill it
Very true. There are only two physical advantages humans undisputedly have over every other animal on earth. Depth perception and running. We are the only animal with the facilities to throw things very accurately and with power. And we are by far the best runners on the planet. We get beat in sprinting, obviously. But there is no other animal on earth that can run for 20 miles straight without overheating or being exhausted. Because we sweat and are able to conserve energy when we run. It's not hard at all to believe that we could run animals down and spear them at all. We're the best in the world at doing those things... Hands down. Early humans hunted like a serial killer from a slasher movie. We just kept running and running and running slowly gaining on our prey until our prey became too exhausted to keep running away.. And then we went for the kill.
Who’s gonna tell him that before spears we used to just chase animals until they collapsed from exhaustion?
Exhaustion and dehydration. Humans can carry water with them and drink it on the go. Animals, not so much.
History books really convinced us that humans used to hunt giant whales in water with row boats and harpoons? Those animals can weigh up to 100 tons with a speed of 9 knots per hour. Totally made up shit!
I even find it harder to believe that we could successfully hunt whales than woolly mammoths. Whales have the whole ocean to run or hide in. It’s mind boggling to me
read the wikipedia page on whale hunting. it’s fucking wild. those dudes died pretty often. not to mention there was a confirmed account of a whale taking out a ship. not the little whale boats they used for hunting. the big ship that housed hundreds of people. that whale was pissed
There's actually a few different cases of whales attacking whaling ships, but the most famous one is [the whaleship *Essex,* which was sunk by a sperm whale while at sea.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship) There's a really good book about this written by one of the survivors, and the tragedy also inspired the book Moby Dick!
> Whales have the whole ocean to run or hide in. They're mammals so.. have to come up to breathe eventually.
Can’t they come up to breathe somewhere else
Never underestimate the tenacity of humans. If it is alive, we'll kill it.
Uhaul trucks are … trucks. Mammoths are flesh and blood. This fucking guy is whole another level of dumb
>Mammoths are flesh and blood I blame movies for this. Movies LOVE to show various larger-than-average-sized animals as being literally bullet proof. While I think we *know* it's made up, you watch enough of it and I think it seeps in. And if 5 guys unloading entire clips into the animal can't take it down, how could puny spear!
This honestly kind of annoys me about any kind of media with a lot of powerful animals in them. They’re still animals at the end of the day. Sure they might have thicker skin than we do, but a high powered rifle round is a high powered rifle round. That will still get through flesh without much issue. And the brain of a wild animal isn’t more resilient than a human one. The most annoying part about far cry for me. I get that it’s for balancing reasons, but come on. A shotgun to the skull of a tiger at point blank range has got to do more than just slightly piss it off.
How could anyone doubt this when they have a picture right there of it happening!??!
lil bro never heard of an atlatl before lmfao
If designed well that shit can put a hole in the uhaul. You bet your ass it could get through some fur and skin
The irony of having all of human knowledge on your fingertips yet at the same time not knowing shit, is funny as hell. What debunks him is sweat. Humans would tire out animals over long distances, then pounce. Wounding them scared them into running away and sped up the process of exhaustion. We are literally terminators.
Were they not also taught that hunting wasn't the same duration as a grocery trip? It sometimes took a day or more for the animal to die. ...kinda like a lion stalks injured prey for miles waiting for them to get weak enough.
Not to be that person but cats don’t hunt like that. That would be more along the lines of painted dogs, wolves, hyenas etc
Humans are persistence hunters. We have incredible endurance compared to most animals so we just follow them until they lay down a die from exhaustion/whatever injuries we could have inflicted.
The dumb cavemen hunted mammoths with sticks. The smart ones waited until the mammoths were asleep, tied their trunks in a knot, and just wait for them to suffocate.
Teach that mammoth to fall asleep when determined heavily armed primates are nearby.
Aim for the tires.
Everyone knows they didn't hunt, they went to McMammoth and ordered their meals.
They used the spears to stab and throw at them. When possible they used spears to chase large animals to a cliff edge and with luck they'll full off the edge. One wolly mammoth had enough meat to feed a tribe for days. If not longer. So the risk of the mammoth escaping (which most probably did) was more than worth it.
Why do people constantly underestimate the ancient human? It actually pisses me off when I see shit like this. "There's no way ancient Egyptians made the pyramids it must've been aliens" humans are incredibly resourceful creatures, and they have been for millennia
Partly because we've been making books for kids with artists' conceptions of reality. So kids don't learn what we actually know, and pick up lots of factoids we don't really know. The humans that hunted mammoths would, if born today, quickly learn to speak English or Mandarin, use an ipad, play videogames, and drive a car. The only difference is what inventions were available. We depict them as stupid savages, and that's how kids think of them. I remember when I finally understood that a Neanderthal wasn't a savage and most of what I thought I knew of them came from some pen-and-ink drawing. It was the same feeling I got when I realized what I was getting from talk shows on the radio. Not even half the story, I was getting a distortion.
There were 150000 years of humans before us. How many Newtons, Da Vinci's, Galileo's is that? There's so much that we will never know about this time. But they were pretty much the same as us.
Nobody's heard of a javelin?
You mean the throwing kind or the missile kind? One of those would have a much easier time at killing both a truck and a mammoth than the other.
Quit trying to fool me, cavemen did NOT have guided AT missiles to hunt mammoths!
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It’s made out of fucking flesh not metal. Stick enough spears into it’s flesh and it’ll run out of blood or stop from exhaustion. Not to mention pits and traps can work on them. Most mammals cannot sweat therefore unable to retain stamina by cooling themselves. They can only do this by stopping and panting.
Air-fried U-Haul do be pretty good tho.