Ancient hunting tools
Similar to bows, atlatls can propel flexible, pointed shafts — called darts, rather than arrows — at high speeds across long distances. Essentially, they were sticklike tools that contained a hook or spur at one end to hold a dart. By swinging the spear-thrower overhead and forward, hunters could launch their darts with greater force than if they were to throw them like javelins.
Archaeological evidence indicates that hunter-gathers in the Old World used atlatls beginning at least 18,000 years ago. Researchers have long thought that Paleo-Indians — including the people of the Clovis culture, who lived around 13,000 years ago and are considered one of the first American peoples — also hunted with spear-throwers.
Researchers reasoned that "if the spear-thrower originated in the Old World, then it only made sense that it must have shown up with early [North American] colonists," Hutchings said. Additionally, Paleo-Indians were thought to have hunted big animals, such as mammoths and ground sloths, which would have required powerful, long-distance weapons to take the animals down safely. "People started wondering just how crazy you would have to be to run up to these things with just a sharp, broken rock tied to a stick."
Opinion:
Tino Gaona
I watched a documentary the other day saying all non Africans had up to 4 percent Neanderthal blood. Native Americans were known to have a high Neanderthal percentage also maybe the earlier first settling ice bridge crossers that could easily bench 350 like a pure Neanderthal didn't need to chunk from a distance. That spear head also looks like the ones us modern day scientists had hell replicating not the usual stone one we see but a well thought out flint spear head we thought Neanderthals were to simple to create.