French researchers have discovered in a cave in the Rhone Valley, France, tiny flint points 54,000 years old. They constitute the oldest trace of the use of the archery technique in Europe, we learn in an article published on February 22 in Science Advances.
The site of the discovery, Mandrin Cave, is also where the remains of modern humans from the same era were discovered, making it the oldest site to testify to the presence ofHomo sapiens in Europe.
As the flint points were exhumed from the same stratum as the teeth ofHomo sapiens, it is very likely that the use of the bow and arrows was introduced in Europe by the first modern humans who ventured into this territory then occupied by Neanderthals. Especially since no trace of their use by Neanderthals before the arrival of the first humans has been found.
Even if the remains of a bow were not found near these arrowheads – which is not surprising, since the wood can hardly be preserved for 54,000 years -, Laure Metz, researcher at the CNRS / University of Aix-Marseille, carefully analyzed under a microscope the traces of wear and impact on the 852 artifacts recovered from the Mandrin cave. She then experimented with the various actions that could be done using such flint points, such as skinning an animal or killing an animal using an arrow and a bow, but with replicas made by tailors. of contemporary stone.
She then compared the marks left by these different uses and those present on the archaeological objects. She then realized that because of their lightness and the particular damage they presented, the very small points of 10 mm and less had to be used as arrowheads launched using a bow to pierce the skin of the targeted animals and constitute an effective weapon for hunting.
Larger artifacts may have served as spearheads, a type of spear — a weapon used by Neanderthals who lived in the region at the same time.
“The Neanderthals used spears made up of a point fixed on a long wooden handle, which one can call an assegai, and which one launched with the arm. Then, the spears becoming lighter, they were thrown using a propellant, a piece of wood or bone which ends in a hook to which the end of the shaft of the spear is attached. The thruster prolongs the throwing action, gives more force and allows you to reach a prey without having to approach as much as you had to do when you only had the spear alone. The advantage of the bow and arrow is that we were able to lighten the projectile even more. The arc is therefore even more effective than throwing the thruster and it allows you to stay even further from the prey you were aiming for. An important advantage given that the prey hunted at that time were large beasts. If we couldn’t kill them all at once, we were in danger,” says Ariane Burke, scientific director of the Ecomorphology and Paleoanthropology Laboratory at the University of Montreal.
A technological revolution
The use of archery, which represented an important technological leap in the evolution of hunting methods, is said to have first appeared on the African continent – points of flint and similar bones have been unearthed in South Africa.
“We know that 60,000 years ago, Homo sapiens already had this behavior, which appeared at different times and in different places in its territory in Africa, probably due to environmental tensions or stresses that caused it to adopt this behavior,” notes Mme Burke.
The use of the bow and arrows seems to be obviously an innovation specific to Homo sapiens. Some hypothesize that it allowed modern humans to supplant the Neanderthals, who never adopted these more powerful tools, even though the two species cohabited for 40,000 years.
For meme Burke, however, it is clear that this is not the key to explaining the disappearance of the Neanderthals. “Neanderthal is like us, he had a complex behavior. We realize more and more how much he resembles us. We were interfertile, there were crosses between humans and Neanderthals, ”she underlines.