Surprisingly Advanced Ancient Spear Tip Was Not Made by Modern Humans
Researchers have found that a spear tip carved from bone, unearthed from Russia in 2003, is as old as 80,000 years. This means the hunting weapon could not have been created by modern humans. Homo sapiens didn't venture into Europe until about 45,000 years ago , so the most likely spear-wielders in this case were the Neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis ). Although examples are still rare, it seems our ancient cousins had advanced their technologies beyond stone tools, using techniques that, until recently, had only been credited to our species. The find was explored in a new paper from a team led by archeologist Liubov Golovanova of the Laboratory of Prehistory in Russia. "The… specimen suggests that at least some groups of late Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals in Europe have started to develop bone-tipped hunting weapons," explain the authors. "They made this invention independently and without influence from early Upp...