HUNTING WEAPONS OF NEANDERTHALS AND EARLY MODERN HUMANS IN SOUTH AFRICA: Similarities and Differences

International audienceRecent research has shown that Neanderthals were not inferior hunters and that their hunting weapons were similar to those used by broadly contemporaneous early modern human populations of South Africa. The oldest known spears are from the site of Schöningen, Germany (about 350–300 kya). However, the hunting equipment of Neanderthals was not limited to simple wooden spears. In western Europe, lithic spear points date as far back as Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6 (ca. 185–130 kya) and are documented from four sites. In South Africa, four Upper Pleistocene Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites (from 75 to 38 kya) have provided assemblages of unifacial and foliate points comparable in shape and hafting position to the European ones. Both kinds of assemblages indicate the use of hand-delivered spears. the backed pieces of Howiesons Poort (65 to 59 kya) are a type of composite weapon armature that has no equivalent in the Neanderthal hunting equipment, at least until the Châtelperronian (35 kya). The smaller pieces are suggested to have been used as transverse arrowheads. Based on detailed technological, morphometric, and impact scar analyses of backed pieces from Klasies River Main Site Cave 1A, Sibudu, and Rose Cottage, we suggest instead that the backed pieces were an innovative way of hafting spears but are not evidence of the invention of bows and arrows. Stronger evidence for the use of bows and arrows seems to occur only about 20,000 years later, in South Africa and in the Near East