The invention of the first firearms such as the bow and arrow marked a milestone in the technological development of our ancestors. Your hunt has become far more effective. However, it was not clear when this technology was first used in Europe. Findings of 54,000-year-old stone arrowheads in a rock shelter in southern France now show that the first representatives of Homo sapiens who immigrated to Europe could have brought bows and arrows with them and used them. Although this gave them a technological advantage over the Neanderthals, these early immigrant groups were not yet able to settle permanently in Europe. This only happened about 10,000 years later.
Even the first representatives of the human species created tools for hunting animals, preparing food and treating skins. Archaeological finds show that Homo heidelbergensis used not only stone tools but also wooden javelins. The Neanderthals refined the technology towards the end of their era with spear throwers, which gave their hunting weapons more range and penetrating power. Even more effective, however, were the bow and arrows, which are considered to be the invention of Homo sapiens, the anatomically modern human. Archaeologists assume that this weapon technology could have developed in Africa around 70,000 years ago. With the spread of Homo sapiens in Europe around 42,000 to 45,000 years ago, it also established itself here, according to the common assumption. However, until now there has been no clear archaeological evidence for this.
Micro-spiers of the first immigrants
Archaeologists in southern France have now discovered the oldest evidence of the use of bows and arrows in Europe. The team led by Laure Metz from the University of Aix-Marseille made the finds in the Grotte Mandrin, a rock shelter above the Rhone Valley in southern France. Findings of tools and bones show that this place was already a popular camp site for the Neanderthals. In 2022, researchers had also discovered teeth and bones of Homo sapiens there, which were already 51,700 to 56,800 years old. They therefore come from the time when our ancestors were not yet able to stay in Europe permanently. Smaller groups immigrated again and again, but they could not found a permanent population and therefore left no genetic traces in our genome. In Mandrin, too, the first early Homo sapiens episode was followed by another Neanderthal settlement.
For their current study, Metz and her colleagues examined more than 850 stone tips that come from the same strata as the Homo sapiens fossils in Mandrin. Around 40 percent of these tips bore marks that indicated attachment to the end of a shaft. At the same time, these stone points were relatively small compared to the common spearheads and stone blades found in mandrin: they were less than three centimeters long and less than ten millimeters thick at the rear end. “This diameter represents an important boundary,” the archaeologists say. When stone points are not mounted on the side of a stick, but directly at the end as an extension of the shaft, as is the case with stylet stone points, then the shaft must not be thicker than the rear end of the point. “Experiments show that a projectile with a diameter thinner than its shaft cannot effectively penetrate its target,” explain Metz and her colleagues. On the other hand, a spear or other thrusting weapon with a shaft less than an inch thick would not be strong and heavy enough to kill a prey.
With bow and arrow to the new continent
This suggests that the small mandrin stone tips were mounted on arrows. Further indications of this were provided by characteristic impact marks on some of these microtips. Comparisons of their proportions with the arrowheads of today’s primitive peoples also revealed striking similarities, as the archaeologists report. In her opinion, all of this suggests that around 54,000 years ago the first representatives of Homo sapiens hunted with bows and arrows in Mandrin. “This proves that even this earliest advance of modern humans into Neanderthal territory was linked to the use of this weapon technology,” the scientists explain. However, it is unclear why these early immigrants were still unable to assert themselves against the Neanderthals. It was only around 10,000 years later that Homo sapiens managed to gain a permanent foothold in Europe and finally ousted the Neanderthals.
Source: Laure Metz (Aix-Marseille Université, Aix-en-Provence) et al., Science Advances, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.add4675