80,000-Year-Old Arrowheads Suggest Neanderthals May Have Made Projectile Weapons

Until now, it was generally assumed that the ability to produce projectile weapons like bow-fired arrows was exclusive to Homo sapiens, yet the puzzling discovery of a series of arrowheads that predate the arrival of our species may be about to change all that. Found at the Obi-Rakhmat rock shelter in Uzbekistan, the small, sharp points were produced around 80,000 years ago, when Neanderthals were the dominant humans in the region.

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According to the authors of a new study, the age of the arrowheads is “disconcerting”, since stone weapons found in Neanderthal sites are often large in size and similar in shape to other tools used for butchering or harvesting plants. However, while examining the lithic assemblage at Obi-Rakhmat, the researchers came across a number of “triangular micropoints” that are identical to certain arrowheads recovered from sites occupied by modern humans tens of thousands of years later.

“According to the fundamental principles of hunting weapon design these micropoints are too narrow for having been fitted to anything other than arrow-like shafts,” write the authors. And while these miniature stone tips may seem small and flimsy, the researchers go on to explain that such arrowheads “were not designed to withstand violent impacts… [but to] to tear the skin of the prey to open the way for the shaft.”

Small, sharp points were ideal for this purpose, and became a staple of the Homo sapiens arsenal during the Upper Paleolithic, which began around the time that our species spread across Eurasia, replacing the Neanderthals. The earliest known use of this weaponry comes from Mandrin Cave in France, where the first wave of modern humans to colonize western Europe hunted prey with projectile armatures some 54,000 years ago.

According to the researchers, micropoints from Mandrin are “identical to those found at Obi-Rakhmat”, all of which raises a number of critical questions regarding the origins of this lithic tradition and the identity of the hominin species that invented it.

To complicate the matter, no human remains were found in the sediment layer that contained the arrowheads, although the Persian Plateau – where Obi-Rakhmat is located – is known to have been populated by archaic Homo sapiens that migrated out of Africa between 70,000 and 60,000 years ago.

A skull fragment and a few teeth found in a 70,000-year-old layer of sediment at Obi-Rakhmat have been identified as a Neanderthal-like child that also displays some morphological traits typical of Homo sapiens. This suggests that the two species met and interbred here, which means they may also have exchanged cultural and technological ideas and practices.

However, the micropoints in question predate this interaction by some 10,000 years. As a consequence, the researchers say that the origin of these arrowheads remains something of a mystery.

Rather than speculating as to who made the weapons, they simply conclude that the surprising discovery indicates that the spread of human populations across Eurasia was probably a more complex process than the prevailing narrative suggests.

The study is published in the journal PLoS One.