Re-considering the origins of Old World spearthrower-and-dart hunting

Abstract

The development of hunting weapons from spears to spearthrowers to bows is universally accepted and seldom questioned. Yet, proxy evidence from Pleistocene Eurasia suggests that bow hunting may have been in play before, or contemporaneous with spearthrower-and-dart hunting. If this was the case, it raises questions about how we think about the origins of spearthrower-and-dart hunting during the late Pleistocene. To address the topic, I summarise direct evidence for Eurasian spearthrowers and analyse their adaptive potential for Homo sapiens groups during MIS 2 as a contextual innovation – instead of a sequential development. I predict that if spearthrowers were used in Africa, it may have been in the Palearctic during a green-Sahara phase, instead of in the more biodiverse Afrotropic that would have stimulated the invention of bow hunting.