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2023 NEWS REPORT Archaeologists find evidence of bow and arrow use outside Africa.

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2023 NEWS REPORT  Archaeologists find evidence of bow and arrow use outside Africa. Empty 2023 NEWS REPORT Archaeologists find evidence of bow and arrow use outside Africa.

Post by Buck Conner 29/10/2023, 3:14 pm

2023 NEWS REPORT

Archaeologists digging in a cave in southern France say they have unearthed the earliest evidence of bow and arrow use outside Africa.

Grotte Mandrin, near Malataverne in the Rhône Valley, is a cave that was inhabited by early modern humans about 54,000 years ago. A research team recovered more than 300 tiny arrowheads intricately crafted in a style known as Neronian at the ancient site. Scientists believe the cave’s inhabitants are the earliest Homo sapiens to have arrived in a region that had long been home to another group of hominins, the Neanderthals.

Neanderthals cooked meals with pulses 70,000 years ago
Almost 200 of the surprisingly delicate arrowheads showed patterns of impact and damage that suggested they had once been thrust, thrown or mechanically propelled in some way, according to the research published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

It’s possible, the researchers said, that possessing advanced projectile weaponry, such as a bow and arrow, could have given these early Europeans an advantage over Neanderthals, who disappeared about 40,000 years ago.

The arrowheads found in the cave were of different sizes. The largest artifacts were 60 millimeters (2.4 inches) in length, while the smallest were just 10 millimeters (0.4 inch). To understand exactly how the points were used, co-lead study author Laure Metz, an archaeologist at Aix-Marseille Université in France, and her colleagues undertook a series of experiments with replica weapons.

Early humans used a ballistic technology.

The study team made 82 replica flint points and attached them to shafts of wood using natural glue made from tree sap, beeswax and the mineral ocher, the residues of which had been found on some of the flint tips. In total, the researchers made 82 projectiles.

Metz worked with a skilled archer, who fired the arrows and spears at a goat carcass — nine were tested by hand and 73 with a spear thrower and a bow made with a deer tendon. The team found that the small size and weight of the flint points meant the points worked best when fired with a bow.

The researchers replicated arrows and spears that were made 54,000 years ago.

Arrows shot from a bow penetrated much deeper — more than 25 centimeters (9.8 inches) deeper — than the points launched with a spear thrower, with 10 of the arrows passing all the way through the goat carcass, according to the study.
Hand-thrown spears rarely penetrated the animal’s skin, the researchers wrote.

Fracture marks on the replica flints shot with a bow also closely matched the pattern of wear on many of the points excavated from the cave, revealing them to be the result of a “ballistic technology,” such as a bow and arrow, the study said.

“When you have these light weapons you need to correct this low kinetic energy with mechanical propulsion. And the only way to make these fractures on the really tiny arrows … was with the bow,” Metz explained.

While the points were tiny, Metz said they were likely used to hunt relatively large animals such as a horse, deer or bison, the remains of which have been found in the cave. However, she said she had not ruled out the possibility that they were used as weapons to cause harm to other humans.

Chris Stringer, research leader in human evolution at the Natural History Museum in London, said he agreed that the tiny points would only have been effective as arrowheads rather than spear points. He was not involved in the research.

2023 NEWS REPORT  Archaeologists find evidence of bow and arrow use outside Africa. Prehis11
  Archaeologists digging in a cave in southern France.

The arrowheads were found in Grotte Mandrin, a cave occupied by early modern humans and Neanderthals.

The earliest clear evidence of the use of a bow and arrow is in South Africa 64,000 years ago — a pivotal moment in human history. Early humans also used the technology in what’s now Sri Lanka to hunt forest animals 48,000 years ago.

Prior to this latest discovery, the earliest hard evidence of the use of bows and arrows in Europe was from wooden bows and arrow shafts found preserved in peat bogs in Northern Europe that date back about 12,000 years, the study said.

Neanderthals stuck to their traditional hunting tools. Grotte Mandrin encapsulates a particularly interesting chapter in the human story because it’s one of a very few archaeological sites that was occupied by alternating groups of early modern humans and Neanderthals: a tooth belonging to a young Homo sapiens found at the cave was sandwiched between layers of Neanderthal remains. Before this, the prevailing scientific wisdom was that modern humans arrived in Europe around 40,000 years ago, around the same time Neanderthal went extinct.

Did our Homo sapiens forebears and Neanderthals hang out together in this cave overlooking France’s Rhône valley 54,000 years ago? The researchers don’t have any hard evidence of interaction between the two groups at this place in time, although we know from genetic studies that the two groups did encounter one another and have babies.

Metz said there was no sign that the Neanderthals who lived in the cave after the makers of the tiny arrowheads adopted that method of flint knapping — and by extension bow and arrow use — even though they may have come across the arrowheads scattered across the cave floor. The stone tools and points associated with Neanderthals, known as Mousterian tools, are much larger and chunkier. Neanderthals hunted massive elephants that once roamed northern Europe.

“When you have a bow and arrow it’s more precise and less effort to use and easier to transport with you. You can take many arrows with you — not just one or two spears to hold in your hand. You can shoot many of them in a very quick operation. All this and you can be alone hunting by yourself,” Metz said.

“What is incredible to me is that they (the Neanderthals) didn’t use, they didn’t develop this type of weapon. They continued to use their traditional weapon — spears thrust or thrown by hand.”

CNN’s Wonder Theory Science Newsletter - Feb. 2023



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Post by Mustang65 29/10/2023, 4:22 pm

Buck Conner wrote:.

2023 NEWS REPORT Archaeologists find evidence of bow and arrow use outside Africa.

READ: NEW UPDATE: Earliest Know Bow, see last post ...

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Post by Buck Conner 2/11/2023, 10:10 am

Flintknapping and Archaeology:

As a group, you are running low on food stores, and you need to find a way to feed your people. Will you hunt or gather to obtain your food? Assuming the second option isn’t viable, what sort of tools will you need to hunt? How will you make these tools given the resources available to you? These questions can be answered through archaeological evidence of an art known as flintknapping.

Archaeologically speaking, flintknapping can be defined as “the manufacture of stone tools by the reductive processes of flaking or chipping” (Flenniken). In essence, it involves a process in which stone tools are created by striking a rock at specific points, known as percussion, or by pressure flaking. This practice yields a myriad of tools, such as arrowheads, burins, knives, blades, dart points, spear points, scrapers, drills, and bifaces, among others. Flintknapping enabled people as early as the Paleolithic age to create tools that made aspects of their daily lives easier.

The first evidence of flintknapping comes to us in the form of the Oldowan stone tools from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. These artifacts date back to about 2.6 million years ago, showing archaeologists that the earliest of humans were capable of fashioning tools, however simple they may have been. The Oldowan tools were composed of choppers and flakes “made by knocking pieces off pebbles to obtain sharp edges” (Renfrew, Bahn, 213). Microwear analysis shows that these choppers and flakes were likely used to cut through plant material and hunted animals. Homo habilis, an ancestral relative of Homo sapiens, produced the Oldowan tools. More likely than not, these early humans wielded the choppers and flakes to shear through the skins of scavenged mammal carcasses, like that of a zebra. Since historical records show that Homo habilis maintained an omnivorous diet, the tools may have also been used to carve fruits or vegetables with tough outside layers.

Experimental archaeologists aim to study the past by recreating artifacts and archaeological evidence. In doing so, archaeologists have been able to deduce answers to such questions of when and where early peoples hunted. The study of flintknapping is valuable to archaeologists because stone tool artifacts can be relatively dated according to their craftsmanship. For instance, a breakthrough finding of a stone tool might indicate that humans were using this technology even earlier than recorded or that the first instance of stone technology was at an altogether different region of the world. These kinds of discoveries challenge the ways in which we think of the past, altering our biases and preconceptions of the cultures of antiquity.

Sources:
Flenniken, J. Jeffery. “The Past, Present, and Future of Flintknapping: An Anthropological Perspective.” Washington State University. 1984.
Renfrew, Colin, and Paul Bahn (2015) Archaeology Essentials. 3rd edition. Thames & Hudson, New York.
Smithsonian Natural Museum of History. “Behavior: Stone Tools.” Smithsonian Natural Museum of History. March 01, 2010. “Flintknapping: Making and Understanding Stone Tools.” University of Texas Press. 1994.
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