Is This The Oldest Evidence of Bow Use in Europe?

And they are tens of thousands of years older than previous finds

Transcript

00:00When I say the word technology, something like this no doubt comes to mind.

00:07But thousands of years ago, one of these was the height of human innovation.

00:11It was believed that homo sapiens started using bows and arrows in Europe only around

00:1412,000 years ago.

00:15But new evidence suggests it was much, much earlier than that.

00:19Experts say that evidence of bow use in Africa has been detected as far back as 70,000 years,

00:24but never this far north that early.

00:26However, recently arrowheads were found in a cave in southern France, and those arrowheads

00:30were from around 54,000 years ago.

00:33The cave has evidence of habitation by both Neanderthals and homo sapiens.

00:36However, the arrowheads were found in the layers of sediment specifically from when

00:40our species populated it, which the researchers say shows that despite the two bipedal species

00:44no doubt crossing paths at some point, Neanderthals continued to use traditional non-projectile

00:49weaponry.

00:50The researchers even recreated the arrowheads they discovered in the cave in an attempt

00:53to test and see if they would be useful as other weapons to rule those out, with one

00:57of the researchers telling AFP, quote, we couldn't throw them at the animals any other

01:01way than with a bow, because they were too tiny and too light to be efficient.

01:05We had to use this kind of propulsion.