Wise man can make arrows about 54,000 years ago

A wise man who reached Europe about 54,000 years ago, introduced the bow and arrow to that continent, a new study suggests.

The researchers examined triangular stone points and other artefacts dug into a cliff in southern France called the Grotte Mandrin. H. wise a move that probably brought the art of archery from Africa to Europe, archaeologist Laure Metz of the University of Aix-Massile in France and colleagues report on February 22. Journal of Sciences.

“Metis and colleagues will show you the hunting bow” [at Grotte Mandrin] as clearly as possible without being bow-in,” says archaeologist Marlize Lombard of the University of Johannesburg, who was not involved in the new study.

There were no arrows at that point. Wooden items such as bows are poorly preserved. The oldest intact bows, found in the stilts of northern Europe, date to about 11,000 years ago, Metz says.

Previous finds of stone and bone points suggest that hunting with bows and arrows originated in Africa between about 80,000 and 60,000 years ago. & previously recovered fossils indicate teeth H. wise visited the Grotte Mandrin first 56,800 years ago, then before the Neandertals’ release about 40,000 years ago and much earlier than researchers had thought H. wise first to Europe (SN: 2/9/22).

“We learned as soon as we knew it.” A wise man the Neanderthals had acquired the use of the bow to migrate to the frontiers,” said Metis.

No evidence suggests that Neanderthals were already in Europe at that time shooting arrows for prey. It is also uncertain whether any substantial hunting advantages are afforded to archers H. wise relative to spears driven or thrown by Neanderthals.

852 among the stone artifacts excavated in a . H. wise sediment layer at Grotte Mandrin dated to about 54,000 years ago, 196 triangular stone points are presented with the top impact damage. Other points 15 stone shows signs of both high-impact damage and alterations by butchery operations, such as cutting.

Comparisons of those findings were made to the damage to the stone replicas of the artifacts that the researchers used as arrows shot from bows and as spearheads inserted into throwing machines. Additional comparative evidence from stone and bone arrows used by recent and contemporary hunting groups.

Impact damage on the edges of the stone points from the French site indicated that these tools were attached to the bottom of the spikes.

The smallest points of the Grotte Mandrin, many with a maximum width of no more than 10 miles, could pierce the hides of animals only when shot from bows like arrows, business researchers say. They conducted experiments with replicas of ancient stone points, and found that stone points less than 10 millimeters wide were effective at hunting speeds only when attached to an arrow shot from a bow.

They conclude that the larger stone points, some of which are several times the size of the smaller points, could have been arrows, or pointed spears, or thrown by hand, or launched from spear throwers.

Lombard, an archaeologist at the University of Johannesburg, is the first suspect H. wise among the Franks they hunted the rocks with bows and arrows, and also with lances, whence and what they hunted. Previous studies directed by Lombardi indicated that sub-Saharan Africans similarly began to differentiate between these two types of hunting weapons between about 70,000 and 58,000 years ago.

H. wise The newcomers to Europe may have learned from the Neanderthals that spear hunting in large groups leads to cold landscapes, where bowstrings break easily and long-distance pursuit of prey is not energy-efficient, Lombard said.

But learn about arrows H. wise Neanderthals were not on the cards. Based on previous analyzes of brain impressions on the inner surfaces of fossil heads, Lombardus suspects that Neanderthal brains may not have had the enhanced visual and spatial abilities that H. wise I won with bow and arrow.

This possibility, although other controversial evidence suggests that Neanderthals have not behaved differently since the Stone Age H. wise (SN: 3/26/20).If the Grotte Mandrin Neandertals never hunted with bows and arrows, but they still survived in the region just fine H. wise About 14,000 years old, the reasons for the Neanderthals’ final release remain as mysterious as ever.