Ancient spear tip stuck in mastodon’s rib is oldest bone weapon in America, study says
A hunter missed the mark almost 14,000 years ago, but their bad luck left a valuable discovery stuck in the skeleton of their ancient prey.
Dubbed the “Manis projectile point,” the ancient spear tip is the oldest bone weapon in America, researchers said in a study published Feb. 1.
Estimated to be around 13,900 years old, the carved bone tip would’ve been fixed to the end of a spear or similar weapon wielded by one of the continent’s first human inhabitants — even predating the Clovis peoples, whose tools have been found across much of the U.S., according to the study.
The Clovis people were once thought to be the first group to arrive in the Americas, and their culture swept far and wide, but growing evidence shows there were others on the continent earlier.
“What is important about Manis is that it’s the first and only bone tool that dates older than Clovis. At the other pre-Clovis site, only stone tools are found,” Michael Waters, professor of anthropology at Texas A&M, said in a release. “This shows that the First Americans made and used bone weapons and likely other types of bone tools.”
Waters led the research team whose findings were recently published. The team was studying the remains of a mastodon — a long-extinct relative of the elephant — unearthed at the Manis archaeological site in Washington state.
In a rib of the skeleton were bone fragments, also that of a mastodon, but from a different animal — the remnants of a prehistoric hunt.
It’s likely a hunter aiming to hit a lung or other vital organ missed and hit the mastodon’s rib cage instead, the study says. The mastodon was able to escape its attackers, at least for a time.
“After the projectile point became embedded in the rib, a hematoma formed, and healing began around the bone fragments within the wound,” the study said.
“These interpretations … imply that the Manis mastodon was attacked, was wounded, and got away, and the injury began to heal,” researchers said. However, it was later killed and eaten by humans, or died of natural causes and consumed after the fact.
The spear tip could be easily overlooked to the untrained eye, and for good reason — it’s made of mastodon bone, researchers say. Not the mastodon it was found in, but a different mastodon.
The team used 3D imaging software and CT scans to reveal the shape of the spear point.
“We isolated the bone fragments, printed them out and assembled them,” Waters said. “This clearly showed this was the tip of a bone projectile point. This is this the oldest bone projectile point in the Americas and represents the oldest direct evidence of mastodon hunting in the Americas.”
The bigger mystery is who these pre-Clovis people were. Little is known about them, but the bone weapon does give experts a better idea of how they lived.
“So there appears to be a cluster of early sites in the Northwestern part of the United States that date from 16,000 to 14,000 years ago that predate Clovis,” Waters said. “These sites likely represent the first people and their descendants that entered the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2023 at 9:54 AM with the headline "Ancient spear tip stuck in mastodon’s rib is oldest bone weapon in America, study says."