Stone-age humans used lethal technology 71,000 years ago
The date when stone-age humans first invented the lethal technology
of spears and arrows has been set back many thousands of years with the
discovery of small stone blades dating to 71,000 years ago.
Archaeologists believe the "bladelets" were used as the sharp tips
for arrows or spears and were made by a relatively sophisticated
technique involving the heat treatment of stone before shaping the final
The fine stone blades were excavated from a prehistoric site called
Pinnacle Point on the southern coast of South Africa and are between
6,000 and 11,000 years older than the previous oldest known samples of
spear and arrow blades, scientists said.
The discovery suggests that the invention of lethal projectile
weapons came far earlier in the course of human prehistory than
previously realised and that, once invented, the knowledge was passed
down the generations, according to a study in Nature led by Curtis
Marean of Arizona State University.
Previously, scholars thought that the technology of "projectile
weapons" was first invented about 60,000 years ago and then lost for
many thousands of years before being reinvented between 40,000 and
50,000 years ago.
"Every time we excavate a new site in coastal South Africa with
advanced field techniques, we discover new and surprising results that
push back in time the evidence for uniquely human behaviours," Dr Marean
Arrows and spears were probably the key weapons that allowed
anatomically modern Homo sapiens to migrate out of Africa and
successfully colonise other parts of the world, including Europe where
the Neanderthals lived, he said."When Africans left Africa and entered
Neanderthal territory they had projectiles with greater killing reach
and these early moderns probably also had higher levels of
hyper-cooperative behaviour," he said."These two traits were a knockout
punch. Combine them, as modern humans did and still do, and no prey or
competitor is safe.
This probably laid the foundation for the expansion out of Africa of
modern humans and the extinction of many prey as well as our sister
species such as Neanderthals."
- The Independent