64 KYA South African arrowheads

[Rokcet Scientist]

Oldest evidence of arrows found


The stone points are approximately 64,000 years old

Researchers in South Africa have revealed the earliest direct evidence of human-made arrows.

The scientists unearthed 64,000 year-old "stone points", which they say were probably arrow heads.

Closer inspection of the ancient weapons revealed remnants of blood and bone that provided clues about how they were used.

The team reports its findings in the journal Antiquity.

The arrow heads were excavated from layers of ancient sediment in Sibudu Cave in South Africa. During the excavation, led by Professor Lyn Wadley from the University of the Witwatersrand, the team dug through layers deposited up to 100,000 years ago.

Marlize Lombard from the University of Johannesburg, who led the examination of the findings. She described her study as "stone age forensics".

"We took the [points] directly from the site, in little [plastic] baggies, to the lab," she told BBC News.

"Then I started the tedious work of analysing them [under the microscope], looking at the distribution patterns of blood and bone residues."

Because of the shape of these "little geometric pieces", Dr Lombard was able to see exactly where they had been impacted and damaged. This showed that they were very likely to have been the tips of projectiles - rather than sharp points on the end of hand-held spears.


Micrographs of ancient stone arrow heads (Image: M Lombard/ Antiquity) Closer inspection revealed remnants of blood (left) and bone fragments (right)

The arrow heads also contained traces of glue - plant-based resin that the scientists think was used to fasten them on to a wooden shaft.

"The presence of glue implies that people were able to produce composite tools - tools where different elements produced from different materials are glued together to make a single artefact," said Dr Lombard.

"This is an indicator of a cognitively demanding behaviour."

The discovery pushes back the development of "bow and arrow technology" by at least 20,000 years.

Ancient engineering

Researchers are interested in early evidence of bows and arrows, as this type of weapons engineering shows the cognitive abilities of humans living at that time.


Sibudu Cave, South Africa (Image: Marlize Lombard) The arrows were excavated from Sibudu Cave in South Africa

The researchers wrote in their paper: "Hunting with a bow and arrow requires intricate multi-staged planning, material collection and tool preparation and implies a range of innovative social and communication skills."

Dr Lombard explained that her ultimate aim was to answer the "big question": When did we start to think in the same way that we do now?

"We can now start being more and more confident that 60-70,000 years ago, in Southern Africa, people were behaving, on a cognitive level, very similarly to us," she told BBC News.


Map of South Africa indicating position of Sibudu Cave

Professor Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London said the work added to the view that modern humans in Africa 60,000 years ago had begun to hunt in a "new way".

Neanderthals and other early humans, he explained, were likely to have been "ambush predators", who needed to get close to their prey in order to dispatch them.

Professor Stringer said: "This work further extends the advanced behaviours inferred for early modern people in Africa."

"But the long gaps in the subsequent record of bows and arrows may mean that regular use of these weapons did not come until much later.

"Indeed, the concept of bows and arrows may even have had to be reinvented many millennia [later]."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11086110

[Digit]

"But the long gaps in the subsequent record of bows and arrows may mean that regular use of these weapons did not come until much later.

"Indeed, the concept of bows and arrows may even have had to be reinvented many millennia [later]."

I find it difficult to believe that having produced such an advanced weapon people would subsequently abandon it, seems odd.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

More likely they simply haven't found evidence of them.....yet.

I wonder if they fired them from their boats?

[Digit]

Sounds more feasible to me Min.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

I find it difficult to believe that having produced such an advanced weapon people would subsequently abandon it, seems odd.

Not if you consider that Europeans somehow managed to completely forget – for well over a thousand years! – how to make and use an advanced and malleable construction material: concrete!
Concrete, as the Romans had so successfully invented and applied in e.g. the Pantheon's dome (still standing today). Europeans had to reinvent it in the late middle ages. For cathedral building (as neccessity is of course the mother of invention).

So that a technology is 'forgotten'/abandoned, and reinvented later, is certainly possible. But the fact that still extremely few (parts/indications of) bows and arrows have been found yet seems indeed a much more likely explanation.

[Digit]

It's possible of course but why I would doubt it is your concrete analogy, it was the Romans in Britain who used concrete rather than us Brits, and after the Romans left there seems to be little evidence of its use almost immediately, till as you point out is was needed again.
I doubt if many Brits in the Roman era lived in much else but wattle and daub. Min might know.
The only time anyone has abandoned a weapon as far as I can see is when it was replaced with something superior.

Roy.

[kbs2244]

“The arrow heads also contained traces of glue - plant-based resin that the scientists think was used to fasten them on to a wooden shaft.
"The presence of glue implies that people were able to produce composite tools - tools where different elements produced from different materials are glued together to make a single artifact," said Dr Lombard. “

Rather than the hunting technique, I think this is the more important discovery.

Given the right tools to start with, any bunch of drunk rednecks can figure out how to hunt. You don’t have to be real smart.
That has been proven more than once.

But points glued into wooden shafts, whether arrows or spears, is a pretty sophisticated technique.

And it has been found in Neanderthal sites in Europe.

I think there is little chance of that technique being independently invented across that much space and time.
There had to been some kind of contact.

[Rokcet Scientist]

“The arrow heads also contained traces of glue - plant-based resin that the scientists think was used to fasten them on to a wooden shaft.
"The presence of glue implies that people were able to produce composite tools - tools where different elements produced from different materials are glued together to make a single artifact," said Dr Lombard. “

Rather than the hunting technique, I think this is the more important discovery.

Agreed. IF that 'glueing technology' was as profound as Dr. Lombard seems to read into it. Imo he's reading far too much into it. As if those traces of goo are indications of a glueing technology on a par with today's: Airbus A380, modern yachts, cars, and even military tanks are now glued together composite materials – usually carbon fibre; no more riveting, bolting, or welding. But that kind of glueing technology was still wildly unthinkable only 30 years ago. To compare that with Stone Age glueing technology – if indeed that is what it was... – is totally absurd. Pure fantasy, imo.

So I think we're back to the apparent hunting technology – bow and arrows – being the more important aspect of this find.

[Rokcet Scientist]

More likely they simply haven't found evidence of them.....yet.

I wonder if they fired them from their boats?

I can reassure you they didn't, Min. Did you you look at that map where they were found? At least a hundred miles from the coast! And no big lakes anywhere near. Of course that could have been different 64 KYA.

I'm sure that, on the coast, bows and arrows – if they were used – were used to shoot fish from boats indeed. Certainly by 64 KYA. But I'm guessing spearing/harpooning was, and still is, a far more widely used way of 'hunting' fish with 'weapons' other than fish hooks.

[Digit]

Logic, right or wrong, would suggest that both the arrow/spear/hook for fishing was preceeded by the gorge, much simpler than a hook and much stronger.

Roy.