Adaptations au lancer
Hoenecke, Heinz, et al., Evolution of the throwing shoulder: why apes don’t throw well and how that applies to throwing athletes, Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery, Juin 2024 [Texte]
« Humans have unique characteristics making us the only primate that can throw well while most other primates throw predominately underhand with poor speed and accuracy. The purpose of this study is to illuminate the uniquely human characteristics that allow us to throw so well. »
Lombardo & Deaner, Born to Throw: The Ecological Causes that Shaped the Evolution of Throwing In Humans, The quarterly review of biology, 2018 (PDF)
« Humans are the only species capable of powerful and accurate overhand throwing. However, the evolution of this ability remains underexplored. Here we draw on several lines of evidence—anatomical, archeological, cross-species comparisons, and ethnographic—to develop a scenario for the evolution of throwing. Throwing has deep roots in the primate lineage. Nonhuman primates throw projectiles during agonistic interactions but rarely to subdue prey. Thus, we argue that throwing first arose during agonistic interactions and was later incorporated into hunting by human ancestors. The fossil record indicates that anatomical adaptations for high-speed throwing in Homo first appeared about two million years ago. Once the effective use of projectile weapons became critical to success in combat and hunting, the importance of the ability to throw, intercept, and dodge projectiles would have resulted in stronger selection on males than females to become proficient at these skills because males throw projectiles more often than females in both combat and hunting.«
Lombardo & Deaner, On The Evolution of The Sex Differences in Throwing: Throwing is a Male Adaptation in Humans, The quarterly review of biology, 2018 [PDF]
« The development of the ability to throw projectiles for distance, speed, and accuracy was a watershed event in human evolution. We hypothesize that throwing first arose in threat displays and during fighting and later was incorporated into hunting by members of the Homo lineage because nonhuman primates often throw projectiles during agonistic interactions and only rarely in attempts to subdue prey. Males, who threw more often than females in both combat and hunting, would have been under stronger selection than females to become proficient at the ability to throw, intercept, and dodge projectiles as throwing skills became critical to success in combat and hunting. Therefore, we predict that males, more than females, should display innate anatomical and behavioral traits associated with throwing. We use data from a variety of disciplines to discuss: the sex differences in throwing speed, distance, and accuracy; sex differences in the development of the throwing motion; inability of training or cultural influences to erase the sex differences in throwing; sex differences in the use of throwing in sports, combat, and hunting; and sex differences in anatomical traits associated with throwing that are partly responsible for male throwing superiority. These data contradict the view held by many commentators that socialization rather than innate sex differences in ability are primarily responsible for male throwing superiority. We suggest that throwing is a male adaptation. »
John Kuhn, Throwing, the Shoulder, and Human Evolution, American Journal of orthopedics, 2016 [Abstract]
« Throwing with accuracy and speed is a skill unique to humans. Throwing has many advantages and the ability to throw has likely been promoted through natural selection in the evolution of humans. There are many unsolved questions regarding the anatomy of the human shoulder. The purpose of this article is to review many of these mysteries and propose that the answer to these questions can be understood if one views the shoulder as a joint that has evolved to throw. »
Roach & Richmond, Clavicle length, throwing performance and the reconstruction of the Homo erectus shoulder, Journal of human evolution, 2015 [Texte]
« Our data show that all H. erectus fossil clavicles fall within the normal range of modern human variation. We find that a commonly used metric for normalizing clavicle length, the claviculohumeral ratio, poorly predicts shoulder position on the torso. Furthermore, no significant relationship between clavicle length and any measure of throwing performance was found. These data support reconstructing the H. erectus shoulder as modern human-like, with a laterally facing glenoid, and suggest that the capacity for high speed throwing dates back nearly two million years.«
Roach & Lieberman, Upper body contributions to power generation during rapid, overhand throwing in humans, Journal of experimental Biology, 2014 [Texte et PDF]
« We found that most of the work produced during throwing is generated at the hips, and much of this work (combined with smaller contributions from the pectoralis major) is used to load elastic elements in the shoulder and power the rapid acceleration of the projectile. Despite rapid angular velocities at the elbow and wrist, the restrictions confirm that much of the power generated to produce these distal movements comes from larger proximal segments, such as the shoulder and torso. Wrist hyperextension enhances performance only modestly. Together, our data also suggest that heavy reliance on elastic energy storage may help explain some common throwing injuries and can provide further insight into the evolution of the upper body and when our ancestors first developed the ability to produce high-speed throws.«
Villotte & Knüsel, “I sing of arms and of a man…”: medial epicondylosis and the sexual division of labour in prehistoric Europe, Journal of archaeological science, 2014 [PDF]
« This indicates that males, but not females, preferentially employed movements involving throwing motions in these hunter-gatherer and early farming groups. Based on this evidence we postulate the existence of a persistent sexual division of labour in these prehistoric European populations involving one or several strenuous activities linked to unilateral limb use.«
Roach & Lieberman, Upper body contributions to power generation during rapid, overhand throwing in humans, Journal of experimental biology, 2014 [PDF]
« High-speed and accurate throwing is a distinctive human behavior. Achieving fast projectile speeds during throwing requires a combination of elastic energy storage at the shoulder, as well as the transfer of kinetic energy from proximal body segments to distal segments. […] together, our data also suggest that heavy reliance on elastic energy storage may help explain some common throwing injuries and can provide further insight into the evolution of the upper body and when our ancestors first developed the ability to produce high-speed throws. »
Roach et al., Elastic energy storage in the shoulder and the evolution of high-speed throwing in Homo, Nature, 2013 [Texte]
« Here we use experimental studies of humans throwing projectiles to show that our throwing capabilities largely result from several derived anatomical features that enable elastic energy storage and release at the shoulder. These features first appear together approximately 2 million years ago in the species Homo erectus. Taking into consideration archaeological evidence suggesting that hunting activity intensified around this time9, we conclude that selection for throwing as a means to hunt probably had an important role in the evolution of the genus Homo. »
Neil Roach, The Biomechanics and Evolution of High-Speed Throwing, Harvard (thèse), 2012 [PDF]
» […] increased torso rotational mobility, laterally oriented shoulders, lower humeral torsion, and increased wrist hyperextensability«
Richard W. Young, The ontogeny of throwing and striking, Human ontogenetics, 2008 [PDF]
« Current evidence supports the conclusion that the role of instruction and learning is minimal. Human throwing is predominantly the result of an innate motor program which emerges at a very early age in all children without teaching, yields a throwing motion that is the forerunner of the one used by adult athletes, is characterized by a prominent gender difference, and proceeds in some adults to a high level of proficiency. The same conclusions apparently ap-ply also to striking (club-swinging), which employs a similar full-body motion. »
Richard W. Young, Evolution of the human hand: the role of throwing and clubbing, Journal of anatomy, 2003 [Texte]
« It is shown that the two fundamental human handgrips, first identified by J. R. Napier, and named by him the ‘precision grip’ and ‘power grip’, represent a throwing grip and a clubbing grip, thereby providing an evolutionary explanation for the two unique grips, and the extensive anatomical remodelling of the hand that made them possible. These results are supported by palaeoanthropological evidence. »
Neil V. Watson, Sex differences in throwing: monkeys having a fling, Trends in cognitive sciences, 2001 [Abstract]
« Fast and accurate throwing was undoubtedly important to ancestral hominids, and was subject to sexual-selection pressures that generated a male advantage in throwing accuracy that persists in modern humans. The balance of evidence, including that from a recent comparative study of throwing in humans and capuchin monkeys, suggests that high-performance throwing involves unique adaptations in the domains of spatial targeting, precision timing, and multi-joint motor control. »
C.J. Knüsel, The throwing hypothesis and hominid origins, Human evolution, 1992 [PDF]
« Fifer (1987) has provided a very useful hypothesis to explain the advent of bipedal gait and locomotion. Through re-focusing attention on a functional argument centred on throwing behaviour he has invigorated the debate surrounding the origins of the hominidae. The present article provides evidence of plastic and pathological osteological indicators of throwing that may aid in more precisely elucidating the timing of this adaptative event and its subsequent development.«
Barbara Isaac, Throwing and human evolution, African archaeological review, 1987 [PDF]
« Ability to throw was probably achieved at an early stage in human evolution but has received little scholarly attention. Although this ability is poorly developed in apes, anatomical studies suggest that the handof Australopithecusafarensis was adapted to throw with precision and force.«
P.J. Darlington, Group selection, altruism, reinforcement, and throwing in human evolution, PNAS, 1975 [PDF]
« Throwing (of stones and weapons) exemplifies both the possible importance of a difficult-to-measure evolutionary factor and the role of reinforcement; in human evolution throwing may have been decisive in food-getting and fighting, in shifting emphasis from brute force to skill, and in inducing evolution of a brain able to handle three-body geometric problems precisely and thus preadapted for more complex functions. »
Techniques paléolithiques
Milks et al., A double-pointed wooden throwing stick from Schöningen, Germany: Results and new insights from a multianalytical study, PLOS ONE, 2023 [Texte]
« Our detailed analysis of the double-pointed stick leaves no doubt that this was a well-planned, expertly manufactured, and finely-finished tool. […] The fine surface, carefully shaped points and use polish suggests this was a piece of personal kit with repeated use, rather than an expediently made and discarded tool. The Schöningen hominins thus had the capacity for remarkable planning depth, knowledge of raw materials, and considerable woodworking skill, resulting in an expertly designed tool. »
Lombard & Shea, Did Pleistocene Africans use the spearthrower-and-dart?, Evolutionary Anthropology, 2021
« Archeologists commonly suppose that among complex projectile weapons humans use as subsistence aids, the spearthrower-and-dart preceded bow-and-arrow use. And yet, neither ethnographic nor archeological records furnish any robust evidence for spearthrower-and-dart use in Africa. Instead, evidence grows apace for ever-more ancient bow-and-arrow use. Here we explore these findings and their implications for models of early Homo sapiens behavior.«
Nicholas Conard et al., A 300,000-year-old throwing stick from Schöningen, northern Germany, documents the evolution of human hunting, Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2020
« The poor preservation of Palaeolithic sites rarely allows the recovery of wooden artefacts, which served as key tools in the arsenals of early hunters. Here, we report the discovery of a wooden throwing stick from the Middle Pleistocene open-air site of Schöningen that expands the range of Palaeolithic weaponry and establishes that late Lower Palaeolithic hominins in Northern Europe were highly effective hunters with a wide array of wooden weapons that are rarely preserved in the archaeological record.«
Note : l’âge des artéfacts de Schöningen est susceptible d’avoir été modifié à 200 000 ans.
Milks et al., External ballistics of Pleistocene hand-thrown spears: experimental performance data and implications for human evolution, Nature scientific reports, 2019 [Texte]
« The data support hypotheses that early spears, such as the double-tapered examples from Schöningen, function as throwing weapons both for flat and parabolic trajectories at distances up to 20 m. »
Sahle et al., Earliest Stone-Tipped Projectiles from the Ethiopian Rift Date to >279,000 Years Ago, PLOS One, 2013 [Texte]
« The evidence for the earliest composite projectile weaponry at Gademotta >279 ka is significant because it provides direct evidence for a highly advantageous, complex technology that pre-dates the emergence of H. sapiens. Complex behaviors are therefore found amongst more than one hominin species, and are not unique to H. sapiens. The evolution of our lineage was shaped by complex interactions between biology, environment and culture. Throwing of composite stone-tipped javelins was one stage in a long process with much deeper evolutionary roots. Roach and colleagues have recently shown that hominins’ ability to throw effectively depends upon a cluster of features in the anatomy of the shoulder, and that this first appeared in H. erectus about 2 million years ago. They argue that throwing – leading to an increase in hunting success – helped to shape the evolutionary trajectory of Homo.«
Jayne Wilkins et al., Evidence for early hafted hunting technology, Science, 2012 [PDF]
« Hafting stone points to spears was an important advance in weaponry for early humans. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that ~500,000-year-old stone points from the archaeological site of Kathu Pan 1 (KP1), South Africa, functioned as spear tips. KP1 points exhibit fracture types diagnostic of impact. Modification near the base of some points is consistent with hafting. Experimental and metric data indicate that the points could function well as spear tips. Shape analysis demonstrates that the smaller retouched points are as symmetrical as larger retouched points, which fits expectations for spear tips. The distribution of edge damage is similar to that in an experimental sample of spear tips and is inconsistent with expectations for cutting or scraping tools. Thus, early humans were manufacturing hafted multicomponent tools ~200,000 years earlier than previously thought. »
Note : datation contextée, peut ne pas être aussi ancien.
Harmut Thieme, Lower Palaeolithic hunting spears from Germany, Nature, 1997 [PDF]
« Here I describe some wooden throwing spears about 400,000 years old that were discovered in 1995 at the Pleistocene site at Schöningen, Germany. They are thought to be the oldest complete hunting weapons so far discovered to have been used by humans. Found in association with stone tools and the butchered remains of more than ten horses, the spears strongly suggest that systematic hunting, involving foresight, planning and the use of appropriate technology, was part of the behavioural repertoire of pre-modern hominids. The use of sophisticated spears as early as the Middle Pleistocene may mean that many current theories on early human behaviour and culture must be revised.«
Articles de vulgarisation
Marta Zaraska, The Evolution of Throwing, Sapiens, 2021 [Texte]
« Adult male chimpanzees, for instance, can throw projectiles overhand at about 20 mph, but 8-year-old boys are able to hurl baseballs at 40 mph. For some top professional baseball pitchers, that number nears 100 mph–and a record-setting fastball topped 105 mph.«
Anthropogoniques 