News From the Field
Archaeologists Identify Spear Tips Used in Hunting a Half-million Years Ago

November 15, 2012

A University of Toronto-led team of anthropologists has found evidence that human ancestors used stone-tipped weapons for hunting 500,000 years ago--200,000 years earlier than previously thought. Hafted spear tips are common in Stone Age archaeological sites after 300,000 years ago. This new study shows that they were also used in the early Middle Pleistocene, a period associated with Homo heidelbergensis and the last common ancestor of Neandertals and modern humans. Full Story

Source
University of Toronto

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