And they are tens of thousands of years older than previous finds
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00:00When I say the word technology, something like this no doubt comes to mind.
00:07But thousands of years ago, one of these was the height of human innovation.
00:11It was believed that homo sapiens started using bows and arrows in Europe only around
00:1412,000 years ago.
00:15But new evidence suggests it was much, much earlier than that.
00:19Experts say that evidence of bow use in Africa has been detected as far back as 70,000 years,
00:24but never this far north that early.
00:26However, recently arrowheads were found in a cave in southern France, and those arrowheads
00:30were from around 54,000 years ago.
00:33The cave has evidence of habitation by both Neanderthals and homo sapiens.
00:36However, the arrowheads were found in the layers of sediment specifically from when
00:40our species populated it, which the researchers say shows that despite the two bipedal species
00:44no doubt crossing paths at some point, Neanderthals continued to use traditional non-projectile
00:49weaponry.
00:50The researchers even recreated the arrowheads they discovered in the cave in an attempt
00:53to test and see if they would be useful as other weapons to rule those out, with one
00:57of the researchers telling AFP, quote, we couldn't throw them at the animals any other
01:01way than with a bow, because they were too tiny and too light to be efficient.
01:05We had to use this kind of propulsion.