According to a report in Science Daily, a new study which included researchers at Arizona State University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Cape Town our ancestors practiced the "hafting" technique, which is attaching stone points to spears to make weapons used in hunting, 500,000 years ago.
The hafting method to build tools require more hard work and planning, which helped the early humans in killing more effectively as these weapons are more powerful compared to sharpened sticks. Hafted tools were common in Stone Age 300,000 years ago. But the study proves that hafted weapons were used by our early ancestors "Homo heidelbergensis," they are known to be the last common ancestors of Neandertals and modern humans.
"There is a reason that modern bow-hunters tip their arrows with razor-sharp edges. These cutting tips are extremely lethal when compared to the effects from a sharpened stick. Early humans learned this fact earlier than previously thought," said Benjamin Schoville, a coauthor of this study and doctoral student affiliated with the Institute of Human Origins, a research center of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University, in a report published in Science Daily.
"Rather than being invented twice, or by one group learning from the other, stone-tipped spear technology was in place much earlier," he added. "Although both Neandertals and humans used stone-tipped spears, this is the first evidence that this technology originated prior to or near the divergence of these two species."
Homo heidelbergensis inhabited Europe during the Middle Pleistocene era about 500,000 years ago. Researchers proved that Homo heidelbergensis were slightly taller than Neandertals. It was learned that stone-tipped weapons were used by Neandertals, 300,000 years ago, but this study takes the invention of these stone-tipped weapons back to Homo heidelbergensis, 500,000 years ago.
"This changes the way we think about early human adaptations and capacities before the origin of our own species Although both Neanderthals and humans used stone-tipped spears, this is the first evidence that the technology originated prior to or near the divergence of these two species," says Leader author Jayne Wilkins, a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto in Canada, in a report published in Daily Mail.
