Are The World’s Oldest Stone Spear Points Really Half a Million Years Old?

If these spear points are actually as old as they seem to be, they represent an archaeological and anthropological game-changer. Could it be that some of our most ancient human ancestors mastered the complex processes that were required to create and mount stone tips to wooden spears a quarter of a million years earlier than has been generally thought?

The spear tips were found at a site called Kathu Pan 1 in the Kalahari Desert. The sediments that held the stones were not dated until 2010. But even though the artifacts resembled younger points that were used as spear tips, their actual use remained uncertain. Researchers stabbed a springbok carcass with replicas of the original points. Then they compared the damage caused to the replicas with damage found on the ancient tips. They determined that the damage found on both sets of points closely resembled one another.

While it may seem relatively simple to successfully attach a stone point to a spear, the reality is that it was a complex process. The hunter needed not only the tip and the wooden spear, but also some sort of string, which could have made of sinew, finely sliced animal hide, preferably rawhide, which would shrink as it hardened around the assembly. He also needed some sort of glue. In primitive societies, glue is commonly based on a tree resin, often mixed with other ingredients. Fire was required to melt the glue and the temperature had to be carefully controlled so that the mixture did not burn.

The actual age of the artifacts could not be established by direct evidence. Neither radiocarbon nor argon potassium dating methods could be used. Argon testing could not be done because there are no volcanic rocks in the area. Radiocarbon dating tests cannot be done on stone objects, not do they work on objects as old as the spear tips are believed to be. So the researchers used indirect methods to date the spear points, which, of course, leaves the door open to other theories.

As with every other remarkable archaeological discovery, new questions have been raised. If these artifacts are really half a million years old, why have no others been found dating between 500,000 and 250,000 years old? Was this valuable technology simply lost for a quarter of a million years, or have other examples simply not been found yet? Or is this another case where archaeologists were not looking for them simply because they did not expect to find them? Another question that arises concerns whether or not H. heidelbergensis used the same glue and string technique to half hand axes, knives, or other tools.

The discovery of the spear points also adds fuel to the argument about whether ancient people such as H. heidelbergensis and his successor, H. neanderthalis, possessed speech. Recently there has been some agreement that Neanderthals could speak. But the idea that H. heidelbergensis could speak is still generating controversy. The existence of the ancient spear points supports the idea that those ancient people could indeed speak. There is almost no other way that the spear-hafting technology could have been passed on or handed down.

An article written detailing the findings was published in the November 2012 issue of the journal Nature. The lead author was anthropologist Jayne Wilkins of the University of Toronto.

There’s a great article with additional detail and photographs here

The World’s Oldest Known Prosthetic

A toe made of wood and leather is thought to be the oldest known prosthetic. It was found on a female mummy buried at Luxor and has been dated to approximately 950 and 710 BC.

The loss of a big toe hampers walking. Researchers, with the help of two volunteers who had lost big toes, showed that the artificial toe was a practical device that would have helped its wearer walk more naturally in sandals, although there were some problems when the testers walked barefoot. This lends support to the idea that these devices were not created for mere cosmetic purposes.

There are other examples of ancient prosthetic devices, though none are currently thought to be older than the Egyptian toe. One is a big toe known as the Greville Chester toe which dates before 600 BC and is currently in the British Museum. This toe is made of cartonnage, a papier mache made with a mixture of animal glue, linen and plaster. A much later example is a Roman bronze and wooden leg, known as the Capua leg, dated to approximately 300 BC.

The Cairo toe is currently at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. For more information and to view photos of the Cairo toe, go here