This crossbow was used to fire both stone-tipped and wooden-tipped spears into bags of ballistics-grade gelatin. (Photo credit: Jayne Wilkins, Wilkins et al., 2014)
It’s long been assumed that stone-tipped spears – the earliest examples of which appeared about 500,000 years ago – were a technological advance, but a new paper actually puts this theory to the test.
Researchers used a cross-bow to fire wooden-tipped and stone-tipped spears into blocks of ballistics-grade gelatin. While both penetrated to a similar depth, the stone-tipped spears left a larger wound cavity, causing more damage and most likely would kill animals (or enemies) more quickly.
The stone-tipped spears caused more damage, indicating that they did indeed represent a technological advancement.
Original research paper published in PLoS ONE on August 27, 2014.
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