Humans may have had access to long-ranged weapons 31,000 years ago. according to researchers who performed a ballistic analysis on a collection of ancient flint projectile heads.Humanity’s evolutionary journey has been punctuated by the development of revolutionary technologies, which have helped our species rise to become the dominant form of life on our planet. One such development was the invention of long-ranged weaponry, which fundamentally changed how our ancient ancestors hunted for food, and in later ages, waged war upon one another. The earliest ranged weapon fragments discovered to date are roughly 20,000 years old. However, according to the results of a new study that involved the balistic analysis of ancient projectile tips recovered from a prehistoric hunting site in southern Belgium, our ancestors could have been using long-ranged weapons to take down prey at a much earlier point in our history — up to 31,000 years ago.“Until now, the early weapons have been infamously hard to detect at archaeological sites because they were made of organic components that preserve rarely,” said Justin Coppe, a researcher at the University of Liège’s TraceoLab, and one of the authors of the new study. “Stone points that armed ancient projectiles, and that are much more frequently encountered at archaeological excavations have been difficult to connect to particular weapons reliably.”The scientists believe that the hunters may have used a primitive ranged weapon called a spearthrower to cast their projectiles, which is somewhat similar in nature to the spike thrower used by Aloy in Horizon: Forbidden West. The weapon is essentially a stick fitted with a hook-like feature on one end that connects with the base of a spear. The tool allowed hunters to impart more energy with a throwing motion, increasing the range and velocity of the projectile relative to a thrown spear. Sadly, the passage of over 30,000 years has seen the organic components used in the weapon’s construction rot away to nothing. However, the hunters’ hardy flint projectile tips were able to survive relatively unscathed, granting the scientists a valuable link to the distant past.The researchers chose to adopt a multi-faceted approach to determining what tools – if any – had been used to fire the ancient projectiles. On one hand, the team undertook a series of physical tests, in which they fired darts and arrows at static targets using replicas of ancient weapons, such as spearthrowers and primitive bows.Each of the weapons cast its projectiles in a slightly different way, which introduced variables in how the stone missile tips struck the target, and resulted in distinctive fracture marks. The team then performed a ballistic analysis of the authentic weapon points recovered from the hunting site, to see how the ancient damage patterns compared to those created during the replica tests. The damage exhibited by the ancient flint projectile heads was found to match extremely well with the stress fractures caused by the replica spearthrower, which serves as evidence to suggest that humans had indeed developed ranged weaponry an astounding 31,000 years ago.Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer
