The Spear Thrower
By around 20,000 years ago, Upper Paleolithic people had invented a deadly device for launching their spears with greater accuracy and velocity. This device, the spear-thrower, was a foot or two long with a handle on one end and a hook on the other that fitted into the blunt end of the spear. This arrangement extended the throwing arc of the hunter. By the middle of the Magdalenian period, around 15,000 years ago, spear-throwers were elaborately decorated with animal forms such as that from the French site of Mas d'Azil used here to illustrate the probable mode of attachment and manipulation. The same themes - for example, headless animals - often recurred.
