Reid Ferring holds a rock in each hand.
They are the size of hens’ eggs. They are oblong. They are grey. They are categorically ordinary. Aside from numbers inked onto their surfaces for cataloging purposes, they look like a quadrillion other natural stones scattered across the face of the Earth.
“The evidence is circumstantial,” Ferring, an American archaeologist, admits. “But we’ve got some good indications they were thrown.”
He is talking about prehistoric pitching.
Hundreds of such nondescript cobbles have been unearthed near the remains of prey animals at Dmanisi, an important hominin site in the forested hills of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
Homo erectus, the first rambler out of Africa, scavenged through a Pleistocene boneyard here 1.8 million years ago. Our dawn ancestors appear to have chucked rocks at saber-toothed tigers, leopards, wolves, and hyenas to drive them from their kills. Ferring’s drab cobbles could be the oldest weapons in the world.
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Read the full story at National Geographic News.
