Latest news with #BryonSchroeder
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
6,500-year-old hunting weapons discovered Texas cave
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Archaeologists in Texas have discovered a cache of ancient hunting weapons, including the remains of poison darts, that is one the earliest collections of hunting weapons ever found in North America. The weapons are about 6,500 years old and were unearthed in a cave over several years of excavations there. They seem to make up a system of interchangeable parts for an atlatl, or spear-thrower. "We found the first pieces in 2020 and then we've found other pieces every year," said Bryon Schroeder, an archaeologist and director of the Center for Big Bend Studies (CBBS) at Sul Ross University in Texas. The team found the most recent weapon last summer and researchers plan to return to the site later this year, he told Live Science. The finds come from the remote San Esteban rock shelter in the Big Bend region beside the Rio Grande and the border with Mexico, where archaeologists from the CBBS and the University of Kansas have carried out excavations since 2019. They've now found evidence of human activity at the site that dates back 13,000 years or more. However, all of the weapons were broken, leading archaeologists to suspect that a single person or a small group may have used the cave to sort through and repair their old hunting weapons about 6,500 years ago, Schroeder said. Related: Tiny, Ancient Native American Weapons May Have Been Used to Train Children to Fight The weapons found so far include a throwing stick, also known as a straight boomerang; four "nock" or notched ends of darts for the spear-thrower; part of the spear-thrower itself; six wooden foreshafts for darts with sharp stone points; and four hardwood foreshafts that the archaeologists think were used for poison darts. Radiocarbon dating suggests the spear-thrower is older than the foreshafts for the darts, but Schroeder thinks that may be because older wood was used to make it — a common issue with ancient wooden artifacts known as the "Old Wood Problem." CBBS archaeologist Devin Pettigrew told Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine that the weapons were all broken, but nearly all components of the atlatl system had been found. "We don't yet have the socket ends [that] we need to understand how the foreshafts attach to the main shafts," he told the magazine. "We're also missing the proximal [or handle] end of the atlatl, but we know enough about this type to reconstruct what it may have looked like." Image 1 of 3 The ancient weapon were unearthed over several years from a remote rock shelter and cave in the Big Bend region of Texas. Image 2 of 3 Teams of archaeologists have excavated several parts of the rock shelter and cave since 2019. Image 3 of 3 The pieces of weapons have been excavated over several years from a particular part of the cave behind the rock shelter and may be the oldest found in North America. Pettigrew was also enthusiastic about the "straight boomerang" found at the site. Historically, boomerangs aerodynamically shaped to return to the thrower were used as toys or for hunting birds. But straight boomerangs, like the weapon found in the San Esteban rock shelter, flew straight and were heavy enough to kill or incapacitate small animals. These straight boomerangs have been found all over the world, with the oldest coming from Poland and dating to about 30,000 years ago. As well as the cache of weapons, the archaeologists excavating the cave have also found an ancient fireplace or "hearth"; coprolites, or fossilized human feces; and the folded-up hide of a pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) — an antelope-like animal native to North America. RELATED STORIES —Ancient burial of fierce female hunter (and her weapons) discovered in Peru —Melting glaciers reveal 1,700-year-old weapons used by reindeer hunters —Oldest firearms ever found in US were abandoned by Spanish in 16th-century battle against Native Americans The pronghorn hide had been tanned — that is, cured by some method to prevent decay — and much of its fur was still there after more than 6,000 years. (Objects made of wood or leather often rot away entirely, but the region's arid climate may have preserved them here.) Schroeder said many bone fragments found at the site suggested that pronghorns were one of the main prey animals for the prehistoric hunters who occupied the rock shelter. The archaeologists are now examining other bone fragments from the cave to determine which additional animal species the ancient people there hunted, and perhaps how they butchered the animals for food.
Miami Herald
01-04-2025
- Science
- Miami Herald
7,000-year-old hunting kit gives ‘snapshots' of ancient human life, researchers say
An ancient human's hunting kit castoffs found in modern-day Big Bend National Park can help reveal how people lived in the region 7,000 years ago, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife. A boomerang, stone dart components and a spear-throwing device called an atlatl used by ancient humans almost everywhere in the world were found at the West Texas site, along with a folded pronghorn hide that still bore hair. Texas Parks and Wildlife said it might be 'the oldest example of an intact full weapon system in North America.' Bryon Schroeder, director of the Center for Big Bend Studies, said the kit found in the San Esteban Rockshelter was in remarkably good condition for a relic, giving researchers insights into the owner's life. 'A person came to the back of the cave and went through their hunting gear piece by piece: 'This is good. This is not good. I need to remake this leather pouch a little bit.' And then they went on their way,' Schroeder told the agency's magazine. 'But that one small act is going to have profound implications in understanding a wide range of topics, including the environment.' He said since the wood survived, it can be analyzed to find out what was growing in the area and how long hunters spent working on their tools. 'We get these incredible snapshots of life, vignettes of how they lived, what the environment was and how they responded to it,' he said. In an interview with McClatchy News, Schroeder said another site had evidence that indigenous Clovis people lived in modern-day Big Bend as long as 13,000 years ago. 'We have also found multiple sites associated with mammoth(s), and we are in the process of dating those and hope to understand if those were killed by humans in the coming months,' Schroeder said. How they hunted Devin Pettigrew, a weapons expert who assisted with the research, said the atlatls and boomerangs are common ancient weapons. Atlatls consisted of handheld, grooved lengths of wood that held spears and allowed for better accuracy, while most boomerangs were only made to travel one direction. 'Atlatls have been found on every continent except Africa and Antarctica, and boomerangs, every continent but Antarctica,' he told McClatchy News. 'These are very common ancient thrown projectiles that are hard to pin to any early time period because of their perishable nature.' A roughly 20,000-year-old mammoth ivory boomerang has been seen in Poland. Ancient Egyptians and Celts used them, and more recently ethnographically by people in Africa, Australia, and the Americas, among other places. The most common type of boomerang is non-returning and made for combat and hunting, like the one found in the cave. 'It is important because it tells us about cultural connections, ecology, and people's lives,' Pettigrew said. He said the earliest evidence of atlatls comes from 20,000 years ago in Europe, compared to 70,000 years ago for the bow. But it's hard to confirm the accuracy of those dates given how many weapons may have been simply destroyed over time and never seen. 'Most scholars think the earliest Paleo-Indigenous people to come into the Americas had atlatls and used them to hunt megafauna like mammoths,' Pettigrew said. 'This was the predominant piercing projectile weapon until around 2,000 years ago when societies were becoming more settled, larger and complex, the bow finally supplanted the atlatl in most, but definitely not all roles.' Schroeder said their Odyssey fieldwork is still ongoing, and more is slated for June 2025.
