A groundbreakingstudythis week has close that humans may have been in North America as early on as 130,000 years ago , 100,000 years before of what most experts thought . This is a truly mind - blowing revelation – and a make newPLOS Onestudy has just augmented it somewhat .
It ’s long been lay down that humans have been using weapons like spear and daggers made out of wood and Flint River , obsidian , or chert for many millenary . Until around the year 2010 , archaeologists thought that the ability to use a technique shout “ pressure sensation flaking ” – wherein the edges of stone tools are pare to make them in particular sharp-worded – date back to no more than around 20,000 age ago .
However , studies then rapidly bear on this date further back , with one particularly notable piece of inquiry uncovering press peel tools in a South African cave that date back75,000 years ago . Now , a team led by the University of Liège , Belgium , has reveal that they ’ve found advanced munition in another South African cave see back to 77,000 years ago .
The stone weapon – depict rather wondrously as “ hazardously pointy ” by onereport – were uncovered in 2013 and 2014 inside Sibudu , a cave around 15 kilometer ( 9 miles ) away from the coastline facing the Indian Ocean . They clearly show marks that argue a marked ivory implement was used to break off away small segment of the rock from an already sharp stone fragment .
In society to sustain that insistence flaking was used here , the squad reproduce the weapons experimentally , and find that their suspicions were confirmed .
Example of clothing traces on one of the focus stones found at the site . Rots et al . 2017 / PLOS One
Some of the piercing stones were ground to have been sharpened on both sides . These so - called “ bifacial ” stone were ostensibly once attached to long joystick using some figure of natural adhesive , and used as spear during hunts .
The grounds is so comprehensive and clear that the team “ contend that the [ evidence at ] Sibudu should be taken as a reference for the South African Middle Stone Age , ” a point of advanced technical development whose precise timing has stay elusive . These 25 pressing flaked weapons have at the very least put a unfluctuating date on it .
It may seem like we’vecome a long waysince then as a coinage . for sure , when it comes to engineering science , we most definitely have – but remember , we are n’t the only species to have enter the Stone Age . Several primates have been found to fashion tools to be used to obtain hard - to - get food , include macaques and capuchins , the latter of which have been using stone tools forat least 700 years .
Pan troglodytes , however , are currently the frontrunners . Archaeological grounds shows they entered the Stone Age around 4,300 days ago – and today , they ’ve been found tomake and use spearsto hunt bush babies and fish .
