These are small stone chips of less than a centimeter which, to the naked eye, do not look like anything.
However, more than 50,000 years ago, they were used to track horses, bison and other animals in southern France.
These are indeed arrowheads discovered by a team of French archaeologists in the Mandrin cave, in the town of Malataverne (Drôme).
The conclusions of their analyses, published in the journal
Science Advances
, push back the appearance of prehistoric archers in Europe by more than 40,000 years.
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The Mandrin cave is a special place in European prehistory.
It has been excavated for many years by the paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimak, from the University of Toulouse - Jean Jaurès.
It was in this cave that a tooth belonging to the oldest
Homo sapiens
on the continent was discovered, dating back more than 54,000 years.
This work pushed back the presence of our ancestors on the continent by more than 10,000 years.
The shards are no more than a centimeter.
Laure Metz and Ludovic Slimak
Read alsoModern man present in France more than 50,000 years ago
The leap in time is this…
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