Archaeologists in Belgium have demonstrated that spearthrowers were used for launching projectiles armed with tanged flint points at the Early Upper Paleolithic site of Maisières-Canal around 31,000 years ago.
Humans have been hunter-gatherers for most of our past, but scientists still lack knowledge about what our prehistoric ancestors gathered and how they hunted because of the near lack of organic preservation at Paleolithic sites.
Of these two modes of subsistence, hunting tends to be better visible archaeologically because it can leave behind durable stone and bone implements that once served as weapon components.
Four weapon systems — thrusted spears, thrown spears, the spearthrower, and the bow — are assumed to have existed in the Stone Age, but the timing of their invention and their possible co-existence remain debated.
“Until now, the early weapons have been infamously hard to detect at archaeological sites because they were made of organic components that preserve rarely,” said lead author Dr. Justin Coppe, a researcher in TraceoLab at the University of Liège.
“Stone points that armed ancient projectiles and that are much more frequently encountered at archaeological excavations have been difficult to connect to particular weapons reliably.”
“Most recently published claims for early use of spearthrowers and bows in Europe and Africa have relied exclusively on projectile point size to link them to these weapon systems.”
“However, ethnographic reviews and experimental testing have cast serious doubt on this line of reasoning by showing that arrow, dart, and spear tips can be highly variable in size, with overlapping ranges.”
In the research, Dr. Coppe and colleagues examined a sample of 329 flint artifacts from the site of Maisières-Canal, which is located in Belgium near the town of Mons, on the northern edge of the alluvial plain of the Haine.
“Maisières-Canal is a reference site for the Early Upper Paleolithic of…
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