5,500-Year-Old Wooden Clubs Were Deadly Weapons
By Megan Gannon, Live Science Contributor | December 8, 2017 08:31am ET
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The striker administered two types of blows: the pommel strike and the double-handed strike. The arrows show the direction of his swing.
Credit: Meaghan Dyer/Copyright Antiquity
How do you solve a Stone Age murder mystery? First, identify the weapon.
Archaeologists in the United Kingdom are turning to forensic methods to understand violence in the Neolithic period.
In experiments described in the journal Antiquity yesterday (Dec. 7), researchers used a replica of a 5,500-year-old wooden club to see what kind of damage they could inflict on a model of a human head. They found that such clubs were indeed lethal weapons. [7 Bizarre Ancient Cultures That History Forgot]
Stone Age conflict
Archaeologists have found ample evidence of violence in Western and Central Europe during the Neolithic period, through burials of people who had skull fracturessome healed, some were fatal from an intentional blow to the head. But it was often unclear where these injuries came from.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/61140-prehistoric-wooden-club-weapons.html