Did the very first humans that reached Europe hunt with bows and arrows? A new study appearing in the journal Science Advances claims that they did, and that this happened 54,000 years ago in southern France. This is the earliest evidence of bows and arrows being used by human beings living on the European continent, preceding the date of the earliest previously discovered archery there by a shocking 40,000 years!
The team of French and American anthropologists responsible for this stunning discovery studied a large collection of ancient artifacts removed from the Grotte Mandrin rock shelter in France´s Rhône Valley. They found hundreds of tiny stone points presumably used to make arrowheads and a single human child’s tooth, both unearthed in an excavation layer dated to approximately 52,000 BC.
While one tooth might not seem like overwhelming evidence, its presence is highly anomalous and therefore quite meaningful. It certainly suggests the tiny arrowheads were in fact left by Homo sapiens , occupying the land during a time when Neanderthals still dominated this region. All of the evidence is incredibly significant, since the Homo sapiens group responsible for bringing bows and arrows to prehistoric France arrived in Western Europe long before modern humans settled permanently in this part of the globe.
