Stone Age Europeans mastered spear-throwers 10,000 years earlier than we thought, study suggests

Four reconstructions of Stone Age projectile weapons with spear points and wooden staffs.

Stone Age people in Belgium were hunting with spear-throwers more than 30,000 years ago  — the earliest known evidence of such a weapon in Europe, a new study suggests.

After investigating more than 300 previously known flint artifacts found at the Maisières-Canal archaeological site in southern Belgium, a research team documented that 17 have minuscule fractures that indicate they were points for projectiles of some type.