early human ancestors may have evolved to throw spears allowing them to hunt around two million years ago, a new study has suggested scientists have found that the skeletons of early species of human changed to give them the ability to throw much like modern humans a study of fossils of homo erectus, an extinct human ancestor, shows that their shoulders and collar bone would have allowed them to hurl sticks accurately and powerfully scroll down for video  a study of fossils of homo erectus, an extinct human ancestor, shows that their shoulders and collar bone would have allowed them to hurl sticks accurately and powerfully the above skeletons of homo erectus were reconstructed from fossils that the researchers used in their study  this would have enabled homo erectus to become a proficient hunter, able to throw weapons like spears and rocks at potential prey dr neil roach, an anthropologist at the george washington university in washington, said: 'the combination of inferiorly rotated, human like shoulders with a tall, mobile waist and low humeral torsion, support homo erectus as the first known hominin possessing the full anatomical complex associated with proficient throwing 55 million years ago   first primitive primates evolve  15 million years ago   hominidae (great apes) evolve from the ancestors of the gibbon  8 million years ago   first gorillas evolve later, chimp and human lineages diverge  55 million years ago   ardipithecus, early ‘proto human’ shares traits with chimps and gorillas  4 million years ago   australopithecines appeared they had brains no larger than a chimpanzee's  28 million years ago   ld 350 1 appeared and may be the first of the homo family  27 million years ago   paranthropus, lived in woods and had massive jaws for chewing  23 million years ago   homo habalis first thought to have appeared in africa  18 million years ago   homo ergaster begins to appear in fossil record  16 million years ago   hand axes become the first major technological innovation  800,000 years ago   early humans control fire and create hearths brain size increases rapidly  400,000 years ago   neanderthals first begin to appear and spread across europe and asia  200,000 years ago   homo sapiens   modern humans   appear in africa  40,0000 years ago   modern humans reach europe  'while direct evidence of early throwing behavior remains elusive, evidence for the intensification of hominin carnivory and hunting behavior dating back two million years is increasing 'we propose that this increased carnivory was facilitated by a flexible, situation dependent hunting and scavenging strategy that included high speed throwing' in the study, which is published in the journal of human evolution, compared the shoulder and collar bone sizes with modern humans and other species they also examined the throwing ability of boys and men from the daasanach tribes living around lake rukrana in north west kenya and south western ethiopia daasanach boys use bent throwing sticks called 'shar' to hunt small game and herd lifestock while adults will also hunt with spears the researchers asked 27 daasanach to hurl throwing sticks as far as they could, measuring the speed with radar guns and the distance they compared their throwing ability to the dimensions of their collarbones and the humerous bone the researchers found that the daasanch were able to throw at speeds of up to 80mph (128km/h)   comparable to skilled athletes they were able to hurl their sticks more than 328ft (100 metres) in many cases, with none throwing less than 196ft (60 metres) the world record for throwing the javelin, for example, is 321ft (98 metres) for men the study showed that differences in collar bone size did not alter the length or speed of the throw by comparing the results to fossils of homo erectus, they conclude that this species of early human would have had similar throwing abilities homo erectus, shown in the reconstruction on the left and the skull on the right, is an extinct ancestor of modern humans that may have shared may of our abilities to throw and hunt, according to the latest research  it suggests that the ability to throw spears and other objects for hunting evolved long before our own species, homo sapiens, appeared on the planet the ability to throw powerfully and accurately has long been thought of as being a uniquely human trait chimpanzees, by comparison can only throw at speeds of around 20mph the study builds on earlier work by dr roach that compared the throwing action of college baseball players with the skeletons of chimpanzees they identified key change to the shoulder, arm and torso of humans that allowed them to store elastic energy in their ligaments and tendons to help power a throw forward with great accuracy homo erectus could have been able to throw further than many modern athletes, according to the research  tucking into meat for dinner helped early humans spread more quickly across the world and had a profound effect on human evolution, scientists say the high quality diet allowed mothers to wean babies earlier and have more children, meaning that human communities grew faster, according to researchers from lund university in sweden the research compared 67 species of mammals, including humans, apes, mice and killer whales, and found a clear correlation between eating meat and earlier weaning they found young of all species stop suckling when their brains have developed to a particular stage, but that carnivores reached this point more quickly than herbivores or omnivores eating meat enabled the breast feeding periods and thereby the time between births to be shortened, according tot he researchers among natural fertility societies, the average duration of breast feeding is 2 years and 4 months this is not much in relation to the maximum lifespan of our species, around 120 years it is even less if compared to our closest relatives: female chimpanzees suckle their young for 4 to 5 years, whereas the maximum lifespan for chimpanzees is only 60 years this was a crucial step towards evolving how to throw and led our ancestors to be able to hunt large prey however, archaeological evidence of weapons like spears have yet to be found dr roach said: 'a number of changes occurred in our evolutionary past to the shoulder, arm and torso make this elastic energy storage possible 'they first occurred two million years ago in the species homo erectus that allowed us to throw with incredible velocity at around that time 'we see hunting behaviour to emerge around that time we think that throwing was important early on in terms of hunting behavoiur to allow our ancestors to kill big game and get more calories in their diet'
kenya the george washington university more than 100 metres 80mph ethiopia daasanach
scientists compared the shoulders of homo erectus with modern humans  the researchers from the george washington university measured the throwing ability of people from the daasanach tribe in kenya and ethiopia  daasanach people could throw sticks at 80mph over more than 100 metres  the scientists found that homo erectus would have had similar abilities  homo erectus could have rivalled modern athletes in their throwing ability 