Join the Club Club By John Steele

     The main close range weapon in the Neolithic age was the wooden club, probably the first human weapon. The spear involved a bit more engineering, and came later. The club could be a big chunk of wood, picked up off the ground.

     Archaeologists interested in head injuries exhibited in skulls of over 5,500 years ago, have investigated, using synthetic skulls typically used in wound ballistic tests of firearms, the likely types of injuries:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/understanding-blunt-force-trauma-and-violence-in-neolithic-europe-the-first-experiments-using-a-skinskullbrain-model-and-the-thames-beater/021170E064757BBF7BF3E1870044A60B/core-reader

     It was found that Neolithic wooden clubs, such as the “Thames Beater,” were highly effective in smashing people’s skulls in. This seems to be a lot of work to prove the obvious, since wooden weapons have been used throughout human history, and it is clear that with a piece of solid hard wood, anyone with some muscle, can smash things like bricks and natural stones, which would certainly be as hard, if not harder than a human skull. Anyway, the tests produced shattered skulls similar to skulls held as historical records.

     There is a lot on the internet about melee weapons for defence and the like, and whole martial arts systems are based around particular weapons like the katana (Japanese sword). Yet, the simple hunk of wood, available at your nearest tree, provides all the politically correct protection one needs. And, when the threat has gone, you can burn the wood and have a pot of billy boiled tea, which I have cooking away on the camp fire right now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gROkxlT6_dw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34lI0CWqmwo
     This last video has a touching end scene, indicating that even shield maidens are gals, deep down. See, this article was not all “T.”