Small stone blades and other tools found in a cave near Mossel Bay in South Africa have provided proof that Stone Age humans invented the technology of arrows and spears some 71,000 years ago.
These tiny artifacts were made and used by Stone Age humans about 71,000 years ago (Kyle S. Brown et al)
“Every time we excavate a new site in coastal South Africa with advanced field techniques, we discover new and surprising results that push back in time the evidence for uniquely human behaviors,” said Prof Curtis Marean of the Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins, a co-author of the study published in the journal Nature.
The technology focused on the careful production of long, thin blades of stone that were then blunted on one edge so that they could be glued into slots carved in wood or bone. This created light armaments for use as projectiles, either as arrows in bow and arrow technology, or more likely as spear throwers.
These provide a significant advantage over hand cast spears, so when faced with a fierce buffalo, having a projectile weapon of this type increases the killing reach of the hunter and lowers the risk of injury. The stone used to produce these special blades was carefully transformed for easier flaking by a complex process called ‘heat treatment,’ a technological advance also appearing early in coastal South Africa and reported by the team in 2009.
“Good things come in small packages,” said co-author Dr Kyle Brown of the University of Cape Town, South Africa. “When we started to find these very small carefully made tools, we were glad that we had saved and sorted even the smallest of our sieved materials. At sites excavated less carefully, these microliths may have been discarded in the back dirt or never identified in the lab.”
Prior studies showed that this microlithic technology appeared between 65,000 and 60,000 years ago during a worldwide glacial phase, and then it was thought to vanish, thus showing what many scientists have come to accept as a ‘flickering’ pattern of advanced technologies in Africa. The so-called flickering nature of the pattern was thought to result from small populations struggling during harsh climate phases, inventing technologies, and then losing them due to chance occurrences wiping out the artisans with the special knowledge.
“Eleven thousand years of continuity is, in reality, an almost unimaginable time span for people to consistently make tools the same way. This is certainly not a flickering pattern,” Prof Marean said. “The appearance and disappearance is more likely a function of the small sample of well-excavated sites in Africa.”
The site where this technology was discovered is called Pinnacle Point 5-6. It preserves about 14 meters of archaeological sediment dating from approximately 90,000 to 50,000 years ago.
“As an archaeologist and scientist, it is a privilege to work on a site that preserves a near perfect layered sequence capturing almost 50,000 years of human prehistory,” said Dr Brown, who co-directed excavations at the site. “Our team has done a remarkable job of identifying some of the subtle but important clues to just how innovative these early humans on the south coast were.”
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Bibliographic information: Kyle S. Brown et al. An early and enduring advanced technology originating 71,000 years ago in South Africa. Nature, published online 7 November 2012; doi: 10.1038/nature11660
