© ULiège/TraceoLabSpearthrowers/ Artist's rendering shows fracture patterns on 31,000-year-old points from the Maisières-Canal archaeological site
Archaeologists previously believed that spearthrowers, which are sometimes called atlatls, were first put into use sometime around 17,000 or 18,000 years ago based on evidence of their use found in European caves, primarily located in southern France.
However, the results of the recent study appear to put those original findings in doubt by showing that these advanced weapons may have been in use millennia earlier than previously believed.
'ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRACTURE SIGNAL' ANALYSIS OF 31,000-YEAR-OLD FLINT ARTIFACTS
A spear thrower is a long shaft with a cup or notch at one end. When used properly, the device functions like an extra extension to the human arm, allowing the thrower to generate significantly more thrust than simply throwing a spear by hand.
Comment: Could it be that both cosmic catastrophes, in addition to human activity, had noticeable impacts on the populations of megafauna?
There's a variety of evidence showing that cometary bombardment and the accompanying environmental shifts wrought havoc on our planet, and life on it changed (repeatedly) as a result. At the same time, it's likely that human migrations and population centres would have sought to benefit from, and control, their environment; which would have involved hunting, but also possibly alongside other measures - such as controlled culls - that sought to ameliorate living alongside such massive, and potentially lethal, creatures.
It seems that the drastic changes in the environment was the strongest driver behind the megafauna extinctions, but is it possible that this genetic data hints at some of the impact that human activity had?