- New research concerning some of the world's earliest weapons suggests that while some Stone Age Africans benefited from spurts of high-tech brilliance, Neanderthals and modern humans in Europe battled big beasts in face-to-face combat that must have been bloody and brutal.
The recent discoveries shed light on Paleolithic life in ancient Europe and push back the invention of the bow and arrow in Africa by at least 20,000 years. They paint a picture nearly as vivid as a scene from The Lord of the Rings, with modern humans, Neanderthals and archaic humans all struggling for survival with their various favored weapons in hand.
Early weapon usage may even go back to our primate ancestors.
From Poop Throwing to Rocks
In fact, the roots of today's technologically advanced warfare may be traced back to primates throwing feces. For defense or possibly out of anger, many primates toss poop or vegetation, such as sticks, at intruders.
"Primates have broad hips and they throw poorly," John Shea, a leading expert on ancient weaponry, told Discovery News.
"No one's ever been killed by a thrown turd, but the roots of aimed throwing are there," added Shea, who is an associate professor of anthropology at New York's Stony Brook University.
He explained that humans evolved a rib cage, a pelvis and rotating hips and shoulders suitable for fast movement and running. These anatomical modifications gave us better throwing ability, enabling us to do serious damage with just a tossed rock hurled while sprinting.
"Not long ago I watched an East African kid drop a gazelle with a single stone," he said.
Stone and Bone Arrows
As humans became more skilled at shaping stones, arrows and darts emerged. At some point, certain human groups in Africa switched to developing bone tools, including arrowheads made out of animal bones.
One bone tool-making operation, called the Howiesons Poort Industry, was based at Sibudu Cave along the north coast of South Africa. Researchers Lucinda Backwell and Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and Francesco d'Errico of the University of Bordeaux recently analyzed three bone tools from the site.
The tools, dating to more than 61,000 years ago, include a slender, needle-like implement likely used in piercing tasks, a polished spatula-shaped piece that probably smoothed and softened animal hides and, most importantly, an arrow point that was likely used for hunting small prey.
Their findings have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
The scientists believe the bone arrowhead was part of the first known bow and arrow set.
Sleek and Safe
Although the wooden bow part of the set probably eroded long ago, Backwell and her team identified the set by comparing the bone arrowhead with a wide range of bone tools from Southern African Middle and Later Stone Age deposits, an Iron Age occupation, nineteenth century Bushmen hunter-gatherer toolkits and bones that she and her team shaped experimentally.
"The Sibudu point parallels a specific type of large, unpoisoned bone arrow head used [with a bow] by Kalahari Bushmen, Iron Age and Stone Age people," said Backwell of the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
"According to this discovery, the oldest bows and bone arrows are now dated to just over 60,000 years old and are associated with Howiesons Poort people in the Middle Stone Age," she added. "These large bone points were securely fixed to reed shafts to make one solid projectile implement."
To this day, hunter-gatherer groups use similar tools without poison to kill small mammals and birds. It's probable the ancient South Africans did the same, especially since plant and animal remains suggest the region was a humid forest at around 60,000 years ago.
Pat Shipman, adjunct professor of biological anthropology at Penn State, told Discovery News that the new research "is convincing in its conclusions and has enormous implications for our understanding of changes in human culture."
Shipman explained that when historians debate when modern human behavior first arose, tool and weapon usage are often a big part of that discussion.
If humans were already making sophisticated, multi-part weapons, like bows and arrows, during the Middle Stone Age, then it's possible that modern human behavior "accompanied, or closely followed, the physical evolution of anatomically modern humans in Africa around 200,000 years ago," she said.
With bows and arrows, humans could also hunt more safely.
"Both bows and arrows and spears enable distance killing of species, thus greatly lessening the danger to the hunter of taking large game animals," Shipman said. "Combined with the use of poisons on the points, these new inventions let hunters kill large animals that would previously have been rarely taken by our ancestors."
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