Bow-and-arrow, technology of the first modern humans in Europe 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France:
Consensus in archaeology has posited that mechanically propelled weapons, such as bow-and-arrow or spear-thrower-and-dart combinations, appeared abruptly in the Eurasian record with the arrival of anatomically and behaviorally modern humans and the Upper Paleolithic (UP) after 45,000 to 42,000 years (ka) ago, while evidence for weapon use during the preceding Middle Paleolithic (MP) in Eurasia remains sparse. The ballistic features of MP points suggest that they were used on hand-cast spears, whereas UP lithic weapons are focused on microlithic technologies commonly interpreted as mechanically propelled projectiles, a crucial innovation distinguishing UP societies from preceding ones. Here, we present the earliest evidence for mechanically propelled projectile technology in Eurasia from Layer E of Grotte Mandrin 54 ka ago in Mediterranean France, demonstrated via use-wear and impact damage analyses. These technologies, associated with the oldest modern human remains currently known from Europe, represent the technical background of these populations during their first incursion into the continent.
One of the questions is whether this could be Neanderthals. I think at this point there is a fair amount of genetic evidence for Neanderthal-modern contact well before the Upper Paleolithic expansion associated with non-African ancestry today. The Altai Neanderthal seems to have “modern-like” ancestry and Neanderthals have modern/African-like Y and mtDNA.
Could Neanderthals do bows and arrows? No idea. But this could clearly be modern humans, who seem to have pushed into Neanderthal territory several times. Did Neanderthals ever move into Africa? Who knows?
I do wonder though about William Calvin’s ideas that human brain development was triggered by throwing things. Perhaps Neanderthals didn’t have the locomatory abilities in this domain? Who knows.
Modern humans had bows and arrows in Africa (
-attested in southern Africa – by at least around seventy to sixty thousand years ago – e.g. at the site of Sibudu, SA, before the main Out-of-Africa migration. And bows/arrows are also known from Sri Lanka in the forty thousands BC. So wouldn’t be too surprising if the first moderns in Europe could have had them as well – other moderns might have used the hand-propelled spear and/or atlatl, as some earlier moderns had.
William Golding’s (Lord of the Flies) second novel ‘The Inheritors’ (1955) imagined AM Humans killing off Neanderthals with arrows, so this possibility has been kicking around for awhile.