Archery Could Date Back 48,000 Years in South Asia

Ancient bow-and-arrow technology dating back some 48,000 years has been discovered in a Sri Lankan cave, making it the oldest evidence of archery to be found in this part of the world.

Ornamental beads, tools to fashion clothes, and projectile points for bows and arrows have been unearthed at Fa-Hien Lena, a cave in southwest Sri Lanka. At a maximum age of 48,000 years old, this evidence for bow and arrow technology is the oldest ever found in South Asia, and possibly across all of Eurasia. This research was published on Friday in Science Advances.

“This new archaeological evidence from Fa-Hien Lena cave in Sri Lanka provides an important reminder that modern human behavior has deep roots in areas far from our African homeland, at a comparable or perhaps even greater age than the better-known evidence from Europe,” Chris Stringer, an archaeologist from the Natural History Museum of London who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Gizmodo in an email.

It’s reasonably well established that early modern humans were living in South Asia during the Late Pleistocene, but archaeologists don’t always agree on the exact timing, and investigations into their material culture is sorely lacking. The reason for this, according to an associated press release put out by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH), is that the “origins of human innovation have traditionally been sought in the grasslands and coasts of Africa or the temperate environments of Europe.” As for the tropical rainforests of South Asia, not so much.

MPI-SHH archaeologist Patrick Roberts, a co-author of the new study, said in the release that “this traditional focus has meant that other parts of Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas have often been side-lined in discussions of the origins of material culture, such as novel projectile hunting methods or cultural innovations associated with our species.” Read the free article.