Oldest Stone Spear Tips Found?

Seen from four angles, a South African stone was likely shaped for a spear.

Some of our early human ancestors may have been smarter, and deadlier, than we thought, according to a new study of what may be Earth’s oldest stone spear points.

If the dating is correct, it suggests our evolutionary forebears mastered the art of the stone-tipped spear half a million years ago—some 250,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Discovering that the world’s oldest known spear points may come from a Homo heidelbergensis site is “like finding an iPod in a Roman Empire site,” said paleoanthropologist John Shea, who wasn’t part of the study. “It’s that level of weirdness.”

But it isn’t weird to imagine these stocky big-game hunters using stone tools or even wooden spears in what’s now South Africa. Until now, though, there’s been no evidence H. heidelbergensis had the know-how to put the two together.

To fasten a handle to a blade—a technique called hafting—a prehistoric hunter likely would have had to procure a stone blade, a wooden shaft, twine woven from plants or animal sinew, and glue made from tree resin. The glue itself may have required a mastery of fire, to liquefy the resin, said Shea, of New York’s Stony Brook University.

Supplies in hand, the toolmaker would have had to assemble the spear sturdily, “so you don’t get killed the first time you use it on a Cape buffalo,” Shea said. (Video: spear-wielding chimps.)

Tip of the Tongue

Hafting would have been worth the work, because once you add a stone blade, a spear is “going to cause a lot more damage, create more bleeding, and cause the animal to die quicker,” said University of Toronto anthropologist Jayne Wilkins, lead author of the new spear-tip study, released Thursday by the journal Science.

By allowing more efficient hunting, Wilkins explained, the spear “means more reliable and regular access to meat.” And scientists agree that more meat in the diet meant increased human brain size. That’s not just an increase in brain tissue, she added. The increase in size hints at intellectual expansion. The hafting process requires forethought. “You have to plan days in advance before actually being able to use your weapons to hunt,” she said. And you’d want to teach your comrades to do the same, presumably by talking.