Scientists have discovered the history behind baseball's most fundamental and necessary action: the overhand throw.

According to the New York Times, the research team said the action first appeared some 1.8 million years ago when humans were beginning to hunt big game. They would have needed to throw large, heavy or sharp objects hard and quickly.

No other primate can throw with the force a human can throw with. Chimpanzees are much stronger than humans and it is known by all that they can throw things, but an adult chimp can only reach 20 mph on an average throw. A little league baseball pitcher can triple that speed.

Dr. Neil Roach of George Washington University wrote in a report in the journal Nature that physical strength has nothing to do with pitch velocity.

Roach and his team analyzed college baseball pitchers throwing from 100 feet with and without a shoulder brace restricting motion. The team also studied the structure of the human shoulder and upper arm and concluded the shoulder and arm store elastic energy, like an Achilles' tendon in the action of running and jumping.

"You're storing energy in your shoulder," Roach said. "It works just like a slingshot would. You're actually stretching the ligaments."

The storage of energy occurs when the thrower cocks his arm back, ball in hand, and prepares to swing his arm forward in the throwing motion. Roach added that the shoulder is not the only contributor in the throwing motion. He said the waist twists as the energy is being released and the arm comes forward to deliver the throw.

The team studied fossils and deduced that this evolutionary development came about the time Homo erectus, the great ancestor of all humans, first appeared - about 1.8 million years ago.

"It's possible that Homo erectus could throw as fast as we do," Roach said.

However, Roach could deduce what items he threw and that aspect remained open. He most likely threw sharp and/or heavy objects to hunt for food.

Pitching coached at all levels, professional and amateur, have studied the throwing motion to try to understand the most devastating injuries to pitchers' careers.

For example, when a pitcher tears his rotator cuff (a group of muscles in the shoulder) the surgery can be long and hard and can keep pitchers off the mound for about six months. Even after a successful surgery, there is no guarantee that the shoulder will be as strong as it once was and that another tear will not occur.

Glenn Fleisig, research director of the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala., said the job of a pitcher is simply not natural for a human shoulder. Even a pitcher with "perfect mechanics" risks hurting his shoulder every time he takes the mound.

"What's not natural is throwing a hundred pitches from a mound every fifth day," he said. "That amount of throwing at that intensity is not natural."

WATCH the Pittsburgh Pirates' Gerrit Cole throw numerous 100 mph fastballs with a seemingly effortless delivery.