Abstract
It is generally acknowledged that the early Upper Paleolithic in western Eurasia (ca. 25,000–35,000 B.P) witnesses the appearance of a wide range of projectile weapons. Many of the stone, bone, and antler armatures of these weapons exhibit functional and stylistic variation similar to that seen among the hunting weapons of recent human groups (Knecht 1993; Peterkin 1993). Because of this, some prehistorians describe this “explosion” of early Upper Paleolithic projectile technology as part of a broader saltatory event marking the appearance of “modern” human behavior patterns (Mellars 1989; Trinkaus 1989). Yet, human fossils with essentially modern postcranial skeletal morphology occur in African Middle Stone Age (MSA) and southwest Asian Middle Paleolithic sites dating to more than 80,000–100,000 B.P (Stringer and Gamble 1993). The Middle Paleolithic cultural associations of these early modern humans raise important questions about the antiquity of “modern” behavior patterns, including the use of multi-component subsistence aids, such as stone-tipped spears. The absence of such weapons in the Middle Paleolithic could suggest important behavioral differences between the earliest modern humans and their Upper Paleolithic counterparts. Finding such weapons in Middle Paleolithic contexts, on the other hand, could suggest a precedent of considerable geological antiquity for the “explosion” of Upper Paleolithic projectile technology.
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Shea, J.J. (1997). Middle Paleolithic Spear Point Technology. In: Knecht, H. (eds) Projectile Technology. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1851-2_3
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