Surprisingly Advanced Ancient Spear Tip Was Not Made by Modern Humans

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Surprisingly Advanced Ancient Spear Tip Was Not Made by Modern Humans

Researchers have found that a spear tip carved from bone, unearthed from Russia in 2003, is as old as 80,000 years. This means the hunting weapon could not have been created by modern humans.

***** sapiens didn’t venture into Europe until

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, so the most likely spear-wielders in this case were the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

(

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

).

Although examples are still rare, it seems our ancient cousins had advanced their technologies beyond stone tools, using techniques that, until recently, had only been credited to our species.

View of the bone spear tip from each side. (Golovanova et al., J. Archaeol. Sc., 2025)

The find was explored in a new paper from a team led by archeologist Liubov Golovanova of the Laboratory of Prehistory in Russia.

“The… specimen suggests that at least some groups of late Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals in Europe have started to develop bone-tipped hunting weapons,”

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

the authors.

“They made this invention independently and without influence from early Upper Paleolithic modern humans that started to arrive to the continent much later.”

The spear tip joins a few other recent finds that demonstrate Neanderthals developed techniques specific to working with bone, such as scraping and flat cutting. These include a 50,000-year-old

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

from Siberia and 40,000-year-old

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

from Europe.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

Details of the tip of the bone hunting weapon. (Golovanova et al., J. Archaeol. Sc., 2025)

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

as old as 400,000 years have also been found in Italy. This is about when Neanderthals first emerged, so it is possible this technology existed even before them.

But the level of craftsmanship of these really early bone tools is not as advanced as those found in Europe after modern humans arrived, Golovanova and team note.

The scarcity of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

bone tools, compared to stone ones, may be due to decay over time, without specific environmental conditions to preserve them.

The Mezmaiskaya Cave, where the spear tip was found amongst a variety of animal remains, stone tools and signs of a campfire, likely provided the conditions required for the bone’s long-term preservation.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

Stone tools found alongside the spear tip. (Golovanova et al., J. Archaeol. Sc., 2025)

“The preservation of bones is exceptional at Mezmaiskaya Cave,” the researchers

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. “No evidence of weathering, chemical dissolution, sediment abrasion, root etching, or trampling have been observed on the specimen, indicating that post-depositional alteration or destruction did not affect the surfaces of the bone tool.”

Golovanova and team identified cracks in the Neanderthal’s bone spear tip during their analysis. These, as well as lack of wear, suggest the weapon had been used to successfully strike something soon after it was carved and bound to a wooden shaft using tar.

The bone was likely once part of a bison.

This research was published in the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

Related News

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Surprisingly #Advanced #Ancient #Spear #Tip #Modern #Humans

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up