Have France’s First Arrows Been Found?

TOULOUSE, FRANCE—According to a Nature News report, Ludovic Slimak of the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès and Laure Metz of Aix-Marseille University suggest that stone points recovered from a 54,000-year-old layer in Grotte Mandrin, a rock shelter in the Rhône Valley, were made by some of the first modern humans to live in the region. A child’s tooth found among the thousands of stone tools in this layer has been identified as a modern human tooth, while the smallest of these tools resemble arrowheads known to have been made by ancient modern humans, the researchers explained. Slimak and Metz made replica points from flint found near the rock shelter, and then attempted to use them as arrows, thrusting spears, and spear-thrower darts to stab or shoot at goat carcasses. They found that the larger points would have worked as spears and darts, but the smaller ones would only have penetrated animal flesh when used as an arrow shot by a bow. Neanderthal remains and tools have been found in layers above and below this modern human layer, they added, but it appears that the Neanderthals who used the cave after the modern humans did not adopt their bow and arrow technology. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Science Advances. For more on some of the earliest known hunting weapons, go to "Weapons of the Ancient World: Hunting Equipment."