Findings suggest hunting with stone-tipped spears began much
earlier than previously believed
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.
“This changes the way we think about early human adaptations
and capacities before the origin of our own species,” says Jayne Wilkins, a PhD
candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and
lead author of a new study in Science. “Although both Neandertals and humans
used stone-tipped spears, this is the first evidence that the technology
originated prior to or near the divergence of these two species,” says Wilkins.