How archery was vital to the survival of early humans

The gun and rifle have overtaken the weapon as the most effective. Scientists say the bow and arrow deserves a place in the history of our species. Modern humans emerged from their African homeland tens of thousands of years ago thanks to archery.

Researchers say that early archers would have been able to kill their prey at a considerable distance while giving their diet a boost. It has become clear that bow-and-arrow technology is old, with some of the oldest arrowheads traced to caves in South Africa.

The earliest evidence of archery was found in a Sri Lankan cave two years ago. The Grotte Mandrin cave in the Rh is thought to have been colonised by modern humans around 54,000 years ago. A tooth of a modern human child and a set of stone tools that look like arrowheads were found.

Slimak stressed that the technology would have given modern humans a key advantage over Neanderthals, but still had to confirm that the tools were arrowheads.

Slimak told the Observer that an animal 100 metres away will think you are too distant to be dangerous. You will be too far away for it to attack you if it gets angry. You can provide more food for your group.

The importance of the bow and arrow to our species was underscored by the fact that it was invented at different times in different parts of the world.

The key to making a bow is knowing your materials. You have to pick a tree that is flexible because the inside of a bow has to be resistant to compression while the outside is not. The string, arrowheads and arrow shaft are made by expert technicians. The whole technology requires a lot of expertise.

The Neanderthals could make magnificent stone tools, but each was a one-off, according to Slimak. This was an industry.

The Grotte Mandrin settlement puts the first appearance of modern humans in western Europe 12,000 years earlier than previous estimates. The settlers did not survive despite their technical abilities.

After 40 years, the signs of modern humans on the Rhône are gone. This generation has spent their entire lives in the region. Neanderthals occupied the site around 2,000 years later. What happened to the early human colonisers? The descendants of modern humans who had traveled from the Levant along the Mediterranean coast are thought to be in the Grotte Mandrin settlement.

They might not have been able to maintain their strength because they didn't have enough. It is possible that they did not have good relations with them or that the fertility between them was poor.

If you have a small group of men, women and children, it's likely you have only a small number of specialists. If you lose one or two of them to hunting accidents or disease, you're going to be vulnerable. If they haven't passed on their expertise to others in the group, you'll end up lacking important knowledge.

It is possible that climate change has had an impact on the Grotte Mandrin group. If there was a change in climate, those trees might have become rarer or even died out completely, and the group may have found it couldn't replace their bows and arrows. Their reliance on them would have left them vulnerable.

The Grotte Mandrin outpost is one of several unsuccessful attempts by modern humans to settle in Europe before taking over the continent. The remains of our species can be found in sites in the Czech Republic and Romania. The genetic profiles produced by bone analyses have no match for modern Europeans. These are some of our species that have been lost.