It is a rod-shaped portable device, easy and convenient to carry, very practical. Its use is also extremely simple. It is only necessary to push a lever to launch a powerful projectile capable of finishing off the most ferocious beast. Atlatls were probably invented tens of thousands of years ago and were a revolution in both hunting and warfare during the Stone Age.
Researchers from Kent State University have also just demonstrated that this spear or dart shooter also works as an “equalizer” that would have allowed women to act as true master hunters, throwing their projectiles at their prey with the same force as men. men.
“One hypothesis for the adoption of the atlatl over its presumed predecessor, throwing spears, is that it allowed a diverse variety of people to achieve the same performance results, thus facilitating the inclusive participation of more people in hunting activities,” he states. archaeologist Michelle Bebber, director of a study that has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Bebber tested this theory by testing as many as 2,160 weapon throws by 108 people, all freshmen (many of whom were Kent State students) who used both throwing weapons and atlatls. The results are consistent with the “atlatl equalizer hypothesis,” which shows that the device not only increases the velocity of projectiles relative to javelins, but also equalizes the velocity of darts thrown by men and women.
“This result indicates that the transition from the javelin to the atlatl would have promoted a unification, rather than a division, of labor,” the expert said in a statement. “Our results suggest that burials of women and men with atlatl weaponry should be interpreted similarly, and in some archaeological contexts women might even have been the inventors of the atlatl,” she adds.
According to Michelle Bebber, a vision has prevailed that tended “in the past to consider women as passive and leave men as the only hunters, but increasingly that does not seem to be the case.” “In fact, there seems to be a growing reconciliation across different fields — archaeology, ethnography, and modern experiments — that women were probably active and successful hunters, big and small,” she says.
Since 2019, every semester, Bebber has taken his class outside to use the atlatl. That was how he realized that his students caught it very easily and could throw projectiles as far as the boys with very little effort. “Often the boys would get frustrated because they would push themselves too hard and try to use their strength to throw the darts,” the archaeologist said. “However, since the atlatl functions as a simple lever, it reduces the muscle strength advantage, which is generally greater in men.”
“Since women seem to benefit more from the use of the atlatl, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that in some contexts women invented the atlatl,” says the researcher. “Similarly, in some primate species, females invent tool technologies for hunting, as documented among Fongoli chimpanzees,” she concludes.
