Study: Stone spear tip made by earlier ancestor [View all]
By MALCOLM RITTER
Associated Press
Nov 15, 2012
NEW YORK (AP) —Scientists say they've found evidence that stone tips for spears were made much earlier than thought, maybe even created by an earlier ancestor than has been believed.
Both Neanderthals and members of our own species, Homo sapiens, used stone tips —a significant development that made spears more effective, lethal hunting weapons. The new findings from South Africa suggest that maybe they didn't invent that technology, but inherited it from their last shared ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis (hy-dil-ber-GEN-sis).
The researchers put the date of the South African stone tips at about half-a-million years ago —200,000 years earlier than other research has suggested.
The new study involved analyzing stone points, a bit less than 3 inches long on average, that had been excavated about 30 years ago. Scientists had previously estimated they were about 500,000 years old, but it wasn't clear whether they were used as spear tips or some other kind of tool, said Jayne Wilkins, a researcher at the University of Toronto and lead author of the new report.
More: http://www.usnews.com/science/news/articles/2012/11/15/study-stone-spear-tip-made-by-earlier-ancestor
= new reply since forum marked as read