80,000-Year-Old Arrowheads From Uzbekistan May Rewrite the Route Humans Took Into Europe

Researchers have identified tiny triangular projectile points in the oldest occupation layers of the Obi-Rakhmat rock shelter in Uzbekistan, dating them to about 80,000 years ago. The team identified the points as projectiles by studying the impact marks left when they struck targets, comparing them with experimental reference data. Their findings are published in the journal PLOS One.

The points are less than 2 centimeters wide and weigh only a few grams, too small and brittle to be mounted on heavy spear shafts. Their size matches the width documented for low-poundage bow arrows, and closely resembles points made by Homo sapiens roughly 25,000 years later during a movement into Neanderthal territory in France's Rhone Valley.

Obi-Rakhmat, discovered in 1962 and most recently excavated under Andrei Krivoshapkin, sits at 1,250 meters in the Tien Shan mountains and holds a lithic industry of points, blades and bladelets spanning roughly 80,000 to 40,000 years ago. The site's skull remains of a child, found in a layer dated to about 70,000 years ago, show a mix of Neanderthal and anatomically modern features, which researchers say could result from hybridization.

The findings add weight to a 2023 hypothesis by archaeologist Ludovic Slimak proposing Central Asia as a key route in the early expansion of Homo sapiens, an alternative to migration models first developed in 19th-century Western Europe. The oldest evidence of Homo sapiens in Australia dates to about 65,000 years ago, roughly 10,000 years older than the earliest evidence from Europe.