Arrow origins traced to Africa

By Dan Vergano,
in USA TODAY Science Snapshot

Nicknamed Otzi, for his resting place in the Ötztal Alps, the "Iceman" was outfitted with a copper ax, flint knife and bearskin hat, a surprise to archaeologists because they all were so well-crafted. His bow and 12 arrows, two of them nicely feathered and tipped with flint points, were likely less surprising, because they nicely fit with the then-current story of the bow and arrow's origins.

"The invention of the bow and arrow used to be closely linked to the late Upper Paleolithic (Stone Age) in Europe," less than 30,000 years ago, says anthropologist Marlize Lombard of South Africa's University of Johannesburg, in a study in the current Journal of Archaeological Science.

Last year, however, Lombard and her colleagues reported in the journal Antiquity, that arrows were around at least 64,000 years ago, and were first discovered not in Europe, but in South Africa. A single quartz arrowhead, bloodstained, had turned up at the Sibudu Cave site, dating to that time. In the new Journalof Archaeological Science study, Lombard reports more arrowheads and more evidence pushing back the age of the bow and arrow.

Why does it matter? Well, modern-looking humans turn up in fossils from as long as 195,000 years ago in Africa, but only spread worldwide starting about 60,000 years ago. Anthropologists have debated for decades about the innovations or changes, everything from language to genes to tools, that turned modern man loose on the world.

Arrows are one possibility for what helped people spread all over the world, either through hunting or fighting, as Lombard cautiously notes. "Although the existence of bow and arrow technology (more than 60,000 years ago) may have far-reaching consequences for hypotheses about human behavioural evolution and adaptation, it is by no means easy to establish," she says at the beginning of her study. In the study, she looks through the microscope at 16 quartz blades found in dirt layers as much as 65,000 years old at the South African site.

All but two of the ancient blades have blood traces on them and nine were deliberately hafted, or chipped, to fit onto a tool, she finds. More than half of the blades look like they were attached to arrows and eight carry traces of blood stains, Lombard concludes. "It is therefore my reading that at least nine tools in this sample were probably used as transversely hafted arrowheads."

The others may have been blades used to butcher animals, she suggests, or fitted onto barbs or darts.

"I think the finding adds to growing evidence for the great antiquity of complex projectile weaponry in Africa," says paleoanthropologist John Shea of Stony Brook (N.Y.) University. "The real startling upshot of this finding is that it challenges longstanding archaeological beliefs that important changes in projectile technology only occurred very recently, less than 30,000 years ago, after humans dispersed into Europe."

In North America, Shea adds, "it also challenges the longstanding hypothesis that the bow and arrow were only invented a few thousand years ago and largely in conjunction with the origins of agriculture."

Even after prehistoric people invented arrows, they likely kept on using spears as well, Lombard suggests. Hunters in Africa still use spears to run down wildebeest and zebra, while using arrows only during part of the year to hunt for giraffe, eland, hartebeest and springbok. So, she concludes, archaeologists shouldn't be surprised when they find both heavier spear points and arrowheads mixed together at future archaeological digs.

" Complex projectile technology may have given our species a crucial ecological advantage in competition with other hominin (human) species as they dispersed from Africa," Shea says, by e-mail. That's one explanation for the disappearance of the Neanderthals, who have left only spear points behind at sites in Europe. Outgunned by modern humans and their arrows, the (literal) "killer app" of its day, the Neanderthals weren't able to compete for game and faded from the archaeological record (if not completely from our genes) about 30,000 years ago.

And the age of the bow and arrow may go further back, Shea says. "My own personal hunch is that the bow and arrow dates to at least 100,000 years ago based on stone tools found at sites in Ethiopia, Kenya and neighboring countries."

No wonder Otzi had such nice arrows. Archery was an ancient technology in his day. Unfortunately for the Iceman.

After a puncture wound was discovered in Otzi's left shoulder a decade ago, researchers at Italy's South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, X-rayed the wound and found what had killed the Iceman— a flint arrowhead that severed a major artery and likely paralyzed his arm. "The Iceman probably bled to death within a matter of minutes," the museum notes, because of the arrowhead.

Milner - Nineteenth-century arrow wounds and perceptions of prehistoric warfare

In American Antiquity 01-JAN-05

Article Excerpt

Warfare in prehistoric North America has attracted considerable attention over the past 15 years or so, much like it has elsewhere in the Americas (Haas 1999; Haas and Creamer 1993, 1997; Keeley 1996, 1997, 2001; LeBlanc 1999; Lambert 1997, 2002; Milner 1999; Milner et al. 1991; Rice and LeBlanc 2001; Webster 1993, 2000). This keen interest contrasts strongly with the situation in the preceding several decades when conflicts prior to the unrest that accompanied European expansion into what are now the United States and Canada were rarely acknowledged, let alone systematically studied. Thus, not very long ago it could be said that"[t]here is no very good proof that precontact societies engaged in warfare that was either common or particularly fierce, and the weight of evidence suggests that they were for the most part pacific" (Sale 1990:318). Such statements can no longer be made. It is now widely recognized that conflicts took place among small-scale societies of the distant past, and that there was considerable temporal and spatial variation in the likelihood that fighting would break out. Yet there is still no consensus over what archaeological findings mean in terms of the intensity of conflicts and their effect on local communities. The number of skeletons with conflict-related trauma--an important part of Sale's (1990:318) "weight of evidence"--serves as a fine example of the divergence in how archaeological facts are interpreted. It has been said recently that when signs of conflict-related injuries, including projectile wounds and mutilations such as scalping, are present in no more than a few percent of skeletons from a cemetery, then fighting among groups rarely broke out (Smith 2003). As Keeley (2001) notes, this view is not at all uncommon among archaeologists. If low-mortality warfare occurred only sporadically, one might conclude that conflicts were generally inconsequential and had little, if any, effect on life in the vast majority of local communities. This position is based largely on negative evidence: little or no skeletal evidence means correspondingly negligible conflict. Perhaps that is why prehistoric warfare, particularly its social, economic, and demographic aspects, has not received the attention that some scholars feel it deserves (e.g., Haas 1999; Keeley 1996, 1997, 2001; LeBlanc 1999; Milner 1999; Webster 1993, 2000). Considering the nature of the archaeological record, the opposite position could also be argued. Even a small proportion of skeletons showing signs of trauma such as projectile wounds, fractures attributable to stone axes, and mutilations involving the removal of body parts are a sure sign that fighting was pervasive and quite conceivably had a noticeable impact on participating communities. Any tendency to underestimate the significance of available evidence would be aggravated by an inclination to hold overly romantic views of life in prehistory, as has been argued by Keeley (1996, 1997, 2001). The critical point is that if a handful of skeletons showing distinctive injuries indicate conflicts were common, then it follows that this aspect of human behavior should be an integral part of studies of ancient ways of life, much more so than is currently done. A better understanding of how closely skeletons with evidence of wounds mirror the number of people who were actually wounded and killed is essential for evaluating these opposing points of view. There can be no doubt that various weapons produced distinctive marks on archaeological skeletons (e.g., Ingelmark 1939; Lambert 2002: Larsen 1997; Milner et al. 1991 : Novak 2000; White 1992). Penetrating spear and arrow injuries, slicing and chopping wounds from sharp metal weapons, fractures from blunt objects such as clubs, and shallow incisions from mutilations including scalping are among the signs of trauma noted in skeletal samples from around the world. The mere identification of injuries, however, does not tell us much about what was happening in past communities unless we also have some idea about the chances that bone might be damaged when an individual was struck and the proportion of victims that might survive. The first issue is related to the recognition of injuries when all we have are skeletons; that is, the sensitivity of what is measured. The second has to do with whether the wounded would immediately enter the mortality sample, some fraction of whom would show skeletal evidence of unhealed injuries. To begin investigating such issues it is useful to focus on specific kinds of trauma. Arrow wounds, in particular, are amenable to such work. The injuries are distinctive, particularly when stone, antler, or metal points remain embedded in bones. Perimortem fractures, in contrast, can be difficult to distinguish from breaks that took place long after burial. Furthermore, considerable information on arrow wounds can be drawn from records of nineteenth-century casualties during the Indian Wars in the American West. These historical data are not without their faults, but they serve to put interpretations of archaeological skeletons on firmer footing.

Indian Wars

Sample Information on Indian Wars arrow wounds came from several sources, most notably Otis's (1871) lengthy compilation of cases (also Bill 1862; Coues 1866; Jackson 1943; Parker 1883; Pope 1864; Wilson 1901). For the most part, the injuries were described by army surgeons, so it is no surprise that soldiers dominate the sample. Just as explicably, the patients were usually of low rank. Civilians and Indian scouts, however, also came under their care. Most cases dated to the 1860s and 1870s, and they usually originated in the Plains and Southwest. The arrows typically had iron heads, although some were tipped with chipped stone and even sharpened wood. The Indian Wars sample consists of 248 injuries and 191 victims, although information is not complete for all people. Arrow wounds with recorded locations on the body represent the great majority of the injuries these people experienced. Patient names, ranks, army units and posts, dates of injury, and attending surgeons were compared to prevent duplication of cases since individual patients were sometimes listed in more than one published source. While more cases are always desirable to identify general trends, what is more worrisome is the possibility that the sample is biased in some manner. Not all injuries would likely come to an Army surgeon's notice, and not all of them would be regarded as worth reporting. From the distance of over a century, it is impossible to evaluate the representativeness of the sample as a whole. Yet it is reassuring that the cases include individuals who died when attacked, long before a surgeon saw the bodies, and others who received only superficial "flesh wounds" that needed little, if any, medical attention. So whatever its deficiencies, the sample includes injuries ranging from those that were immediately lethal to ones that were little more than scratches. Moreover, many cases came from a surgeon's report that covered all patients who came tinder his care (Bill 1862), and Otis's (1871) lengthy coverage described a wide variety of wounds, especially the common ones.

Indian Wars

Injuries Roughly three-quarters (70 percent) of the 191 people in the Indian Wars sample survived their wounds. Of 128 individuals for whom information on the number of wounds is available, 81 percent were hit by one arrow: 12 percent and 7 percent of them were struck by either two to four or at least five arrows, respectively. The time of death was reported for 35 people: one-half (49 percent) of them died when injured or soon thereafter, and the remainder (51 percent) survived for as little as six hours to just over seven weeks. Arrows struck many parts of the body, although there was an uneven distribution of wounds (Table 1). Here the body is divided into the head and neck, the flee portions of the upper and lower limbs, the thorax, and the abdomen and buttocks. All but four of the Indian Wars injuries with some location information could be assigned to one of the anatomical units. The four exceptions were either in the thoracic or abdominal regions, so the injuries were divided equally between those two parts of the body. The classification of wound location conforms to that of VanGurp and colleagues (1990) who summarized records for 90 arrow-wound patients admitted to two hospitals in Papua New Guinea in 1987. (1) The New Guinea and Indian Wars samples differ because the former do not include deaths that took place immediately or minor wounds that did not require hospital attention. Nevertheless, the modern information highlights the variation in wounds that might occur in different cultural settings. The most remarkable discrepancy between the Indian Wars and Papua New Guinea samples is the relative proportions of injured upper and lower limbs. The Papua New Guinea wound distribution appears to be fairly representative of those receiving attention in hospitals, to judge from an earlier study of arrow wounds where the legs were also several more times as likely to be injured than arms (Sharp 1981). (2) It is difficult to say why a difference in arm and leg injuries might exist--assuming the samples...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.