Source: Huffington Post
Our early ancestors may have been cleverer than we once thought.
An international team of researchers said last week they had found evidence that sophisticated weapons once thought to be unique to early humans were in use tens of thousands of years before Homo sapiens first walked the planet.
In their new paper, published Nov. 13 in PLoS ONE, the researchers explained that after careful analysis of sharpened obsidian fragments discovered at an Ethiopian Stone Age site known as Gademotta, it’s been determined that the pieces, believed to be about 280,000 years old, were parts of stone-tipped javelins.
Researchers looked closely at tiny markings and fractures on the artifacts to determine how they were used, and they believe the items to be the oldest stone-tipped projectiles ever found.
The spears are “so ancient that they actually predate the earliest known fossils for our species by 85,000 years,” Discovery News reported.
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