More spheres

A correspondent drew my attention to the piece about stone balls at reference 1, built on the paper about the balls of ‘Ubeidiya at reference 2. Following my own excursions into the same territory noticed at reference 3. The upshot of which at first appeared to be that humans had been making small stone balls more or less ever since they left Africa – well over a million years ago – and quite possibly before that.

Then there was a hint at the end of reference 1 – now lost to me as I have hit the new Scientist limit on freebies – that the point of these more or less spherical stones was that you could throw them better. From where I associate to Australian aborigines, some of whom at least, can perform prodigious feats of accuracy with thrown stones, to the point, as I recall, of bringing down birds in flight. An accuracy which our top-flight footballers and tennis players can maybe match. And it seems entirely plausible that throwing a more or less spherical stone is a much better proposition that throwing an irregular, awkwardly shaped one.

From where it is not such a big step to admiring roundness for its own sake.

These Australians are noticed towards the end of reference 4, where there is a reference to an earlier paper which is onto prehistoric projectiles, reference 5. And reminding myself what this last it is about, I find that it talks of African stone balls, eminently suitable for throwing, from 1.8 million years ago to 70,000 years ago. So the people at ‘Ubeidiya – just south of the Sea of Galilee in what was Palestine – probably inherited the idea from Africa. And while the present paper, reference 2, does mention the Cave of Hearths, at the other end of the Great Rift, it does not mention this earlier paper. Noting that the balls at the Cave of Hearths seem to be naturally occurring spheroids made of diabase (or dolerite), an igneous rock to be found at reference 6 – so collected rather than made.

In any case, the present paper is not so much interested in throwing these balls as in making them, to being sure that they were made on purpose, to which end it deploys sophisticated mapping and mathematical techniques – spherical harmonics and surface curvature – on a sample of 150 such balls from ‘Ubeidiya. Concluding that they were made round on purpose and that they were an end-product, not a by-product.

Without actually having read much of all this, my own conclusion is that from very early times, humanoids and humans have both been attracted to small spheres and to have found them useful as projectiles. With the result that these spheroids have been turning up all over the place since the mists of time. An urge which eventually morphed into the rather more elaborate balls of reference 3.

Maybe ancient interest faded a bit with the invention of spears, bows (and arrows) and slings, capable of more powerful projection. Although the more peaceful application of grinding food may have gone on for longer.

Maybe the games of cricket and baseball, where throwing hard balls of roughly the same size is important, are present day relics. While hockey, lacrosse, shinty and hurling are derivatives. With tennis for softies. With ice hockey with its puck in cold countries. I dare there are games of the same sort in other parts of the world.

PS 1: reference 1 was widely reported in the media last year, but does not appear to have leaked. Luckily, I am allowed the snap above. I think the measuring rod does centimetres.

PS 2: the survey article at reference 7 has not leaked either, with the online custodians, JSTOR and Taylor & Francis, both wanting substantial sums for access. But I did learn of the important distinction in this world between stones which had been flaked or otherwise modified so as to have two faces – bifaces; including scrapers, cleavers and hand axes – and others. For Texan bifaces, see reference 8.

References

Reference 1: Mysterious ancient stones were deliberately made into spheres: Stone balls found at a site used by early humans about 1.4 million years ago didn’t become round after being used as hammers, but were intentionally knapped into spheres – Michael Le Page, New Scientist – 2023.

Reference 2: The limestone spheroids of ‘Ubeidiya: intentional imposition of symmetric geometry by early hominins? – Antoine Muller, Deborah Barsky, Robert Sala-Ramos, Gonen Sharon, Stefania Titton, Josep-Maria Vergès, Leore Grosman – 2023. 76 references at the end: clearly plenty of interest out there in all this sort of thing.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/geometrical-balls.html. 

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/counting-pebbles.html. 

Reference 5: A Dynamical Analysis of the Suitability of Prehistoric Spheroids from the Cave of Hearths as Thrown Projectiles – Andrew D. Wilson, Qin Zhu, Lawrence Barham, Ian Stanistreet, Geoffrey P. Bingham – 2016. Another 46 references.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabase. 

Reference 7: Spheroids and battered stones in the African Early Stone Age – Pamela R. Willoughby – 1985. World Archaeology, Volume 17.

Reference 8: https://www.springlakearchaeology.txst.edu/sldr2014/artifacts/lithics/sldrbifaces.html.