We know poison-coated arrows were used 60,000 years ago to stun larger prey and enable hunters to get close enough to complete the kill.
Stanley Kubrick’s mesmerising film 2001: A Space Odyssey opens with a scene in which two rival hominin tribes meet and threaten each other at a waterhole. The ritualistic encounter turns deadly when one of the apes picks up a bone and uses it to kill a rival. Kubrick (and Arthur C Clarke, on whose novel the film was based) attributes this key evolutionary step – the invention of weaponry – to brain waves implanted by a mysterious black slab – a reference to the enduringly popular idea that human innovation results from our being visited and mentored by aliens. In the real world, archaeology can inform us more reliably on the invention and use of weapons in prehistory.
Handaxes are known to date back c.1.76 million years, but these are multi purpose tools, not necessarily used to kill. Arrowheads have a less ambiguous purpose. Some of the oldest examples discovered so far come from Sibudu Cave, located 40km north of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, a World Heritage Site of great importance for the understanding of the emergence of early Homo sapiens in Africa and the development of tools.
