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Literature Text
A little blurb on dinosauroid cultural-technological development.
With saurian technology, the route to modern stone-blade technology was just as alternate to our own as was their route to intelligence. While our ancestors developed the hand-axe and honed their stone-throwing skills to scavenge kills, the saurian’s ancestors were developing more and more advanced pointy sticks. Beginning with twig and leaf tools for grub-fishing, these developed into larger proto-spears, for stabbing into burrows and dens of small mammals and birds. These developed into hardier stabbing spears, which became the main tool of cooperative killing of small and medium-sized game. This was their technological plateau - because of their butcher claws, a band could quickly divide up and devour a smaller kill, but they were restricted to smaller prey because their claws weren’t effective on larger carcasses. These skills would serve them well as the Pliocene progressed, the slowly worsening climatic conditions prompting more social complexity and superior hunting techniques.
Stone hammers only appeared with frequency early in the Pleistocene, as they were increasingly needed to smash open bones and hard nuts as the ice age made food scarcer and harder to find. These stone hammers rapidly gave rise to new technology as the Pleistocene progressed, moving from beak and manus-held stone blades to spear-tips and specialized tools over the course of some fifty-thousand odd years. By the Eemian interglacial, saurian technological and cultural complexity rivaled that of our own Cro-Magnon ancestors. The Eemian, like the Holocene for us, would be the great interglacial that would allow the flowering of dinosaurian civilization.
With saurian technology, the route to modern stone-blade technology was just as alternate to our own as was their route to intelligence. While our ancestors developed the hand-axe and honed their stone-throwing skills to scavenge kills, the saurian’s ancestors were developing more and more advanced pointy sticks. Beginning with twig and leaf tools for grub-fishing, these developed into larger proto-spears, for stabbing into burrows and dens of small mammals and birds. These developed into hardier stabbing spears, which became the main tool of cooperative killing of small and medium-sized game. This was their technological plateau - because of their butcher claws, a band could quickly divide up and devour a smaller kill, but they were restricted to smaller prey because their claws weren’t effective on larger carcasses. These skills would serve them well as the Pliocene progressed, the slowly worsening climatic conditions prompting more social complexity and superior hunting techniques.
Stone hammers only appeared with frequency early in the Pleistocene, as they were increasingly needed to smash open bones and hard nuts as the ice age made food scarcer and harder to find. These stone hammers rapidly gave rise to new technology as the Pleistocene progressed, moving from beak and manus-held stone blades to spear-tips and specialized tools over the course of some fifty-thousand odd years. By the Eemian interglacial, saurian technological and cultural complexity rivaled that of our own Cro-Magnon ancestors. The Eemian, like the Holocene for us, would be the great interglacial that would allow the flowering of dinosaurian civilization.
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Comments14
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Swords would probably not occur here, at least the large diversity of such weapons in our own time. The spear would rule. Up close and personal, a form of fencing might have developed, the dinosauroids striking at eachother with beak-held blades designed for thrusting above all else. I can see one on one combat being very much like modern cockfights, yet added with the brainpower of the dinosauroids and their weapons, their every step would be very carefully planned out, perfectly balanced, focused on striking for vulnerabilities and using their quick reflexes to weave, bob and dodge. Grabbing in combat would probably be a last-ditch effort, as their hands, while effective for grasping, would find it awkward to thrust or slash. On the other hand, maybe they'd have enough dexterity to plunge a knife through the neck of an adversary right up close-On further thought, it's not that hard. Again though, most likely a last-ditch effort or finishing strike.