Bows and Arrows and Complex Symbolic Displays 48,000 Years Ago in the South Asian Tropics

Overview

Journal Sci Adv

Specialties Biology
Science

Date 2020 Jun 26

PMID 32582854

Citations 11

Authors

Michelle C Langley

Noel Amano

Oshan Wedage

Siran Deraniyagala

M M Pathmalal

Nimal Perera

Nicole Boivin

Michael D Petraglia

Patrick Roberts

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Archaeologists contend that it was our aptitude for symbolic, technological, and social behaviors that was central to rapidly expanding across the majority of Earth's continents during the Late Pleistocene. This expansion included movement into extreme environments and appears to have resulted in the displacement of numerous archaic human populations across the Old World. Tropical rainforests are thought to have been particularly challenging and, until recently, impenetrable by early . Here, we describe evidence for bow-and-arrow hunting toolkits alongside a complex symbolic repertoire from 48,000 years before present at the Sri Lankan site of Fa-Hien Lena-the earliest bow-and-arrow technology outside of Africa. As one of the oldest rainforest sites outside of Africa, this exceptional assemblage provides the first detailed insights into how our species met the extreme adaptive challenges that were encountered in Asia during global expansion.

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