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Laure Metz, Archéologue et chercheuse en anthropologie, Aix-Marseille Université (AMU)

The earliest modern humans in Europe mastered bow-and-arrow technology 54,000 years ago

Europe Ludovic Slimak Science Advances France
To test the ballistic properties of the stone points found in the Mandrin cave, modern duplicates were created and hafted on to shafts, as they may have been 54,000 years ago. Laure Metz, Ludovic Slimak, CC BY-SA

Based on research in France’s Mandrin cave, in February 2022 we published a study in the journal Science Advances that pushed back the earliest evidence of the arrival of the first Homo sapiens in Europe to 54,000 years ago – 11 millennia earlier than had been previously established.

In the study, we described nine fossil teeth excavated from all the archeological layers in the cave. Eight were determined to be from Neanderthals, but one from one of the middle layers belonged to a paleolithic Homo sapiens. Based on this and other data, we determined that these early Homo sapiens of Europe were later replaced by Neanderthal populations.

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