60,000 Years of the Bow and Arrow?

Recent investigations at the Middle Stone Age Sibudu Cave site in South Africa have produced simply gobs of new information about hunting technology, including the oldest evidence for bow and arrow use. If correct, the Sibudu Cave data extends the use of bow and arrow backwards by several tens of thousands of years.

The Sibudu Cave site is a rockshelter on the South African coast, close to Border, Rose Cottage, Blombos, and Klasies River caves. All of these caves have Middle Stone Age components associated with Howiesons Poort/Still Bay occupations.

Howiesons Poort/Still Bay

Left: refitted bone point from the HP layers at Sibudu Cave. Right: close-up view of two aspects showing the facets covered by fine longitudinal striations produced by scraping with a burin or unretouched stone edge.
Photo Credit: Lucinda Backwell (c) 2008

HP/SB, if you aren't already aware, is a fascinating period in our history. Between about 65,000 and 75,000 years ago on the very southern tip of Africa, early modern humans lived in a series of caves and conducted themselves in very modern ways. They made complex stone and bone tools, they ate a wide range of small and large mammals, they used red ochre for decoration, they even dabbled in art, with striations on rocks and shell ornaments.

And then all this impressive talent disappeared, or at least as far as archaeological science has discovered. Bone tools and stone tools and red ochre use and all that stuff doesn't appear again in humans until the Late Paleolithic of Europe, some 20,000-30,000 years later.

But... Arrow Points?

Many of the HP/SB sites have conical bone points, and these points taper gently along their length. The points have been blackened, perhaps by exposure to heat, and they probably represent a range of types of tools---needles, leather punches, spear points, and, according to researchers looking at Sibudu cave assemblages, the tips of arrow points.

Researcher Lucinda Backwell was kind enough to send along some large format photos, which have been used to build a photo essay of the bone tools so you can get a good look at them, and maybe get a somewhat better understanding of the logic behind their interpretation.

Now, the thing is--there hasn't been a lot of research along the Southern Dispersal Route (at least not published in English yet), which is the route researchers believe Early Modern Humans used to leave Africa to enter Asia and Australia. Some information has trickled out about modern behaviors in north Africa, such as Grottes des Pigeons. So maybe we can trace the development of hunting technology along the coastline, or in other parts of Africa yet to be examined; but we'll see. The next few years should be really interesting ones for archaeology.

Sources and More Information
Recent investigations at Sibudu Cave have resulted in at least 15 academic papers on the various pieces, and many of them are still in the works.

• Photo Essay of Early Modern Human Bone Projectile Points
• Sibudu Cave
• Howiesons Poort/Still Bay
• Blombos Cave
• Klasies River Caves
• Tim Jones on Remote Central beat me to this story: 60,000 year-old arrowhead from Kwa-Zulu Natal?