The story of the first encounters between Neanderthals and modern humans may depend on hundreds of small stones recently discovered in a cave in southern France.
Carefully carved, these flints would have been used as arrowheads, according to the discovery’s authors. At around 54,000 years old, this would be the oldest example of their use in Western Europe.
Human evolution scientists agree that the bow and arrow was a technology that gave modern humans a competitive advantage over Neanderthals. If this discovery is confirmed, it would mean that Homo sapiens made contact with them much earlier than previously thought. But there are still doubts among some scientists.
In February last year, a group of French scientists published a study that caused as much dust as skepticism among paleontologists. In this article, they described the discovery of multiple teeth in a cave in the Rhône Valley of France. All belonged to Neanderthals except one: an incomplete baby tooth from a child no more than seven years old.
The scientists claim that the tooth belonged to a Homo sapiens – that is, a modern human. They estimated that it must be around 54,000 years old. The problem with this dating is that it would mean pushing back the accepted date of modern humans’ arrival in Western Europe by several millennia. Therefore, the relevance of this new work – published in Science Advances – is that it provides even more evidence: arrows, an invention of modern man.
For about 300,000 years, the European territories were the domain of the Neanderthals, who became extinct about 40,000 years ago. Although the subject is hotly debated, for scientists these humans would have succumbed to a process that entailed the spread of other humans—especially the modern ones.
During this period, the Sapiens left Africa via Suez and spread across the rest of the world until they reached western Europe in the latter part of the Middle Palaeolithic. The clearest evidence is found in Germany and Italy, which arose between 48,000 and 45,000 years ago.
The same researchers who found the baby tooth found about 1,500 stone artifacts in the same layer of soil. Made primarily of flint, these cutting blades are sharp on both sides and have a blunt end. The small triangular dots indicate that they must be arrowheads. So this would mean that modern humans used bows and arrows for hunting – a technology that Neanderthals did not have and that gave Sapiens a competitive advantage.
These artifacts have been studied in great detail. The scientists have even used the materials to make their own arrows and shoot them at animals to see how effective they are and how they compare to those recently found in the cave.
Researchers used the flints to make their own arrows and shoot them at animals. They wanted to know if the observed impact marks indicated that Ludovic Slimak’s artifacts had been used as arrows
Laure Metz – researcher at the University of Aix-Marseille and first author of the study – explains the relevance of analyzing these pieces:
“By studying the points and all other artifacts discovered in the Mandrin Cave, we greatly enrich our knowledge of these technologies in Europe…it allows us to push back the archery era in Europe by more than 40,000 years.”
Comparison with what has been found in other strata corresponding to Neanderthal times also lets us know what weapons they used.
“The study shows that Neanderthals did not develop mechanically powered weapons and continued to use their traditional weapons, based on the use of giant spear-shaped tips that were thrust or thrown by hand,” concludes Metz.
Another lead author of the article – Ludovic Slimak, a researcher at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès – shares with EL PAÍS via email what he believes to be the significance of the recently discovered arrows:
“The [bow and arrow] provides a fundamental competitive advantage to populations familiar with this technology.”
He also recalls that bows and other propulsion systems enabled hunting at range with greater speed, efficiency, and precision.
“The list is very long… it makes a big difference in populations that only used heavy hand-thrown spears, like the Neanderthals.” These required close contact with their prey — something that makes hunting difficult and much more dangerous.
“[Arrows] offer safe, easy and almost limitless access to protein. This must have had a direct impact on how many people you have [could] feed and thus how many children you [could] sure to support.”
Joseba Ríos Garaizar – who works at the Bilbao Archaeological Museum in Spain – is an expert on the ancient stone industry. He studies their stone tools and weapons – especially the signs of use. For him, the hypothesis put forward by this work is very suggestive, but he believes it [the conclusions] might go too far.
“It is clear that some of the [flints] leave impact marks, but not all. They could have been part of a powered weapon – but the fact that they were arrows says a lot,” he warns.
Another question raised by the study is the dating of the tips. To date the layer in which they found it, the scientists relied – as well as the milk tooth – on the soot from the bonfires that had accumulated on the walls of the cave. The Mandrin Grotto has been inhabited for thousands of years, but not continuously. Therefore layers of soot alternate with calcium carbonate. Like tree rings, this allowed scientists to estimate the age of the artifacts and remains at 54,000 years.
Enrique Baquedano – director of the Archaeological and Paleontological Museum of Madrid – states that this dating technique must be combined with others. Even when that’s done, he says, “It’s still a very complicated appointment [process].”
Baquedano agrees with Ríos Garaizar in emphasizing the questionable nature of the hypothesis of the first modern humans armed with bows and arrows. But he also mentions another gap in the theory:
“It’s very powerful [scientific] Result… but it depends on a single baby tooth that isn’t even complete yet. It’s broken.”
Baquedano — who recently published a paper on hunting and its symbolism among Neanderthals — agrees, “although that’s true [Neanderthals] had no arrows, their lithic industry includes very small things.”
Juan Luis Arsuaga – co-director of the Atapuerca archaeological site near Burgos, Spain – likes the idea that the artifacts are arrows and believes they actually belong to some of the first modern humans to live in Europe arrived, but he agrees via email that “this would need to be proven”.
Like other colleagues, he doubts the clear identification of the milk tooth. He doesn’t comment on the arrows because that’s a question for archaeologists – not paleontologists like him – to solve.
For Arsuaga there are three possibilities: “Either the Neanderthals used bows and arrows…or the inhabitants of the Mandrin cave were Cro-Magnons (modern humans)…or the stone points were not for arrows or assegai, but for throwing javelins by hand.”
The research project states that the soot on the walls of the cave indicates that the first inhabitants lived in the cave for barely 40 years. After that, there is no trace of them in the layers of the cave, which was used again centuries later by the Neanderthals.
When asked why a group with superior technology didn’t survive another generation, Slimak – who has defended his thesis since he began digging at Mandrin two decades ago – made the following point:
“The ability to reach an area doesn’t mean your population will stay there [there] forever. A key issue for nomadic populations living in small groups is the ability to form a strong network of social connections with indigenous peoples. This is critical as the survival of any traditional nomadic population requires the exchange of genes in order to reproduce and survive.”
Although this happened millennia later – as evidenced by the percentage of Neanderthal DNA in modern-day humans – this does not appear to be the case with the Sapiens hiding in the Mandrin Cave.
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