Article 13 - "modern humans made their point"

Ashley Neto-Hayward November 6, 2009 ANTH 1500 Article Review - #13 Modern Humans Made Their Point The main idea of this article is modern humans and the ?points? that they made. John Shea and Alison Brooks did two separate studies to determine which projectile points came from what time period and which set of human ancestors. This article relates to archaeological research. The archaeologists, Allison Brooks and John Shea, tried to find answers about modern humans, where their projectile points were made and during what time period. They did two studies to prove that light-weight points used with launchers were used by modern humans 40,000 years ago. They think that these points helped modern humans get out of Africa and hastened the extinction of the Neanderthals. They think that it could have been used for warfare and used to kill Neanderthals. This article relates to many things we have talked about in class. We have talked about Clovis points and how they came to the New World. Further research in Shea and Brook?s study could lead to more evidence or an answer to the Clovis point discrepancy. This article also relates to the discussions we?ve had on how the Neanderthals became extinct, because Shea believes that the modern humans could have contributed to their extinction by using their projectile points in warfare. Also, it talks about how these modern human projectile points needed a certain ?grammar and order? to make them. This means that they needed social networks, trade/exchange of special materials. This relates to our discussions on trade and exchange in the modern human world, and the formation of society. Projectile points could be something they traded. From reading this article, one could say that they imported and exported materials in order to make their projectile points.