February 22, 2023 – 10:11 PM
Artifacts discovered in a rocky cave in southern France indicate that Homo sapiens fired stone projectiles into Europe 40,000 years earlier than previously thought – He writes Posted by Gizmodo on Science.org Stady Based on.
A research team led by Laurie Metz, an archaeologist at Aix-Marseille University and the University of Connecticut, found 852 artifacts, including cut stone points, blades and chipped stones, in the Grote Mandarin near the Rhone River Valley, which the researchers say indicate that people who lived There ancient people used firearms. The research group’s study builds on the study published last year, which established the presence of an ancient man in this place based on 54,000-year-old teeth.
“For the first time, we provide the first evidence of the arrival of the first Homo sapiens in Europe, which occurred 10-12 thousand years earlier than previously known,” Laurie Metz said in an email to Gizmodo. He added, “Based on the functional analyzes of the stone elements, we see that these early modern humans mastered archery perfectly, setting back the Eurasian origins of these remarkable techniques by about 40,000 years.”
Stones of different shapes and sizes are found in the rock cave. The size of the tips and the way they were cut helped the researchers conclude that they could be used. For example, the larger tips would have been attached to the ends of spears, while the smaller tips would have been compatible with bow and arrow techniques, according to the team’s analysis.
No trace of the bow was found at the site, but there is certainly a reason for this: “The bow-making techniques are chiefly based on the use of perishable materials; Wood, fibres, leather, resin and sinew, which are rarely found in European Paleolithic sites and make archaeological identification of these techniques difficult, Metz said.
