XPost: sci.anthropology.paleo

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00526-y
22 February 2023

Europe’s first humans hunted withbows and arrows
A cave site in France holds hundreds of tiny stone
points, alongside remains thought to belong to Homo
sapiens

A 54,000-year-old cave site in southern France holds
hundreds of tiny stone points, which researchers say
closely resemble other known arrowheads — including
replicas that they tested on dead goats.

The discovery, reported on 22 February in Science
Advances, suggests that the first Homo sapiens to
reach Europe hunted with bows and arrows.
...
Last year, researchers excavating Grotte Mandrin
claimed that the site held the earliest known
evidence of Homo sapiens in Europe. In one of the
cave’s archaeological levels, known as layer E,
researchers co-led by cultural anthropologist
Ludovic Slimak at the University of Toulouse - Jean
Jaurès in France identified a child’s tooth and
thousands of stone tools. They concluded that the
child had been a Homo sapiens.

Among the tools were hundreds of tiny points, many
of which were as small as 1 centimetre wide, weighed
only a few grams and were nearly identical in shape
and size. The smallest points were similar to other
arrowheads made by ancient and modern humans, and
some contained similar fractures and other damage
at their tips, which could have been created by
high-velocity impact.

The researchers made dozens of replica points from
flint found near the rock shelter,and fashioned them
into bows and arrows using wood and other materials.
They also made thrusting spears and spear-thrower
darts. They used the weapons to stab or shoot at dead
goats.

Some of the larger points could have been used
effectively with spears or darts. But only a bow and
arrow could have generated the force needed to wound
or kill an animal with the smallest points, says Laure
Metz, an archaeologist at Aix-Marseille University in
France who co-led the latest study with Slimak. “It’s
not possible to use these tiny pointswith something
other than a bow and arrow.”

Grotte Mandrin contains many horse bones, and Metz
suspects that humans sheltering in the cave hunted
these animals as well as bison migrating through the
Rhône Valley.The team has found a horse femur with
damage consistent with a stone point, and Metz dreams
of finding an arrow point embedded in an animal bone.
...


https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add4675
Bow-and-arrow, technology of the first modern humans
in Europe 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France
22 February 2023

Abstract
Consensus in archaeology has posited that mechanically
propelled weapons, such as bow-and-arrow or
spear-thrower-and-dart combinations, appeared abruptly
in the Eurasian record with the arrival of anatomically
and behaviorally modern humans and the Upper Paleolithic
(UP) after 45,000 to 42,000 years (ka) ago, while
evidence for weapon use during the preceding Middle
Paleolithic (MP) in Eurasia remains sparse. The ballistic
features of MP points suggest that they were used on
hand-cast spears, whereas UP lithic weapons are focused
on microlithic technologies commonly interpreted as
mechanically propelled projectiles, a crucial innovation
distinguishing UP societies from preceding ones. Here,
we present the earliest evidence for mechanically
propelled projectile technology in Eurasia from Layer E
of Grotte Mandrin 54 ka ago in Mediterranean France,
demonstrated via use-wear and impact damage analyses.
These technologies, associated with the oldest modern
human remains currently known from Europe, represent the
technical background of these populations during their
first incursion into the continent.

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