Bows and arrows and complex symbolic displays 48,000 years ago in the South Asian tropics

Abstract

Archaeologists contend that it was our aptitude for symbolic, technological, and social behaviors that was central to Homo sapiens rapidly expanding across the majority of Earth’s continents during the Late Pleistocene. This expansion included movement into extreme environments and appears to have resulted in the displacement of numerous archaic human populations across the Old World. Tropical rainforests are thought to have been particularly challenging and, until recently, impenetrable by early H. sapiens. Here, we describe evidence for bow-and-arrow hunting toolkits alongside a complex symbolic repertoire from 48,000 years before present at the Sri Lankan site of Fa-Hien Lena—the earliest bow-and-arrow technology outside of Africa. As one of the oldest H. sapiens rainforest sites outside of Africa, this exceptional assemblage provides the first detailed insights into how our species met the extreme adaptive challenges that were encountered in Asia during global expansion.

A worked bone assemblage from 120,000–90,000 year old deposits at Contrebandiers Cave, Atlantic Coast, Morocco

“…Formal bone tools begin to appear occasionally in the Middle Stone Age archaeological records in Africa, but consistent bone tool manufacture and diverse bone and antler tool types are not typically found until ∼48 ka ago, during the Upper Paleolithic of Eurasia ( Hublin et al., 2020 ; Langley et al., 2020 ) and ∼44 ka ago during the Later Stone Age of Africa ( d'Errico et al., 2012b ). Three formal bone tools were described from Broken Hill cave in Zambia and include two “gouges” and one bone point ( Barham et al., 2002 ).…”

Human Evolution in the Center of the Old World: An Updated Review of the South Asian Paleolithic

“…Late Pleistocene contexts and sites are more widespread but also remain inadequately dated. Recent examples of new and previously-known sites that were dated for the first time include Attirampakkam in Tamil Nadu where the later Middle Paleolithic ends at 73 Ka [58], Dhaba in Madhya Pradesh ( [41,79]), the Middle Paleolithic site of Sandhav in Gujarat [36] and Fa-Hien Lena in Sri Lanka [62]; the Sri Lankan evidence has been reported as the oldest known bow-and-arrow technology outside Africa at 48 Ka, making it contemporary with the microliths at Dhaba (also 48 Ka) and Mehtakheri which is 45 Ka [45]. The primary reason for the increase in such dates is the growing application of refined or new luminescence techniques as well as radiocarbon methods.…”

“…without a microlithic component) Upper Paleolithic assemblages in India, though numerous sites have been reported. The only date currently available for a blade-dominated assemblage in the entire Subcontinent is 45 Ka for Site 55 in Pakistan [31], making it contemporary with the young Middle Paleolithic assemblages in northern India [38] and old microlithic assemblages in central India and Sri Lanka [41,62].…”

“…[3,4,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]). Over three dozen Paleolithic and early microlithic sites have been dated in Pakistan [29][30][31][32][33], India [5,14,16,, Nepal [59] and Sri Lanka [60][61][62][63] since the 1980s onwards, using different relative and absolute dating methods including biochronology, palaeomagnetism, stratigraphic correlation, U-Th, U-series, K-Ar, Ar-Ar, luminescence, electron spin resonance, radiocarbon (calibrated and uncalibrated) and AMS. These various ages range from ~2.6 Ma to ~35 Ka, and include geographically random sites belonging to various prehistoric technologies including Oldowan-like, Acheulean, Middle Paleolithic, Upper Paleolithic and the earliest microlithic assemblages (Figure 1 and Table 1).…”

‘Moving South’: Late Pleistocene Plant Exploitation and the Importance of Palm in the Colombian Amazon

“…Discussions of hominin and human colonization of different continents and environments during the Pleistocene often have a tendency to focus on the ways in which societies were able to procure animal resources. More specifically, discussions of human migration out of Africa and around the world have been linked to the development and application of more sophisticated technologies and hunting strategies, including the bow and arrow [1][2][3]. However, the role of plants in these early migrations of our species has received less attention, with greater focus on the later domestication of cultigens and the transition to agriculture [4][5][6][7].…”