UCL Archaeologists uncovered a mixture of use and burial at the Obi-Rakhmat rock shelter in northeastern Uzbekistan. They discovered arrowheads that are at least 80,000 years old. The most exciting research finding came from the Paltau valley, located on the southwestern tip of the Talassky Alatau range in the Tien Shan. This finding suggests that prehistoric humans of the region were developing sophisticated mobile weapons technologies even long ago in the Initial Upper Paleolithic epoch.
The site possibilities are endless, and the archaeological site has an extraordinary collection of 194 point specimens. It contains 193 diminutive triangular flakes, all excavated from layers 20 and 21 of the shelter. These layers drape a trove of archaeological material, in some places over 10 meters thick and dating from 90,000 to 40,000 years ago. This image compares a few unretouched micropoints identified by researchers, as well as one retouched specimen from simple triangular flakes to regular Levallois points.
Detailed Findings from Obi-Rakhmat
The archaeological team focused on the size and shape of the Obi-Rakhmat micropoints. These micropoints average 18.2 mm in width, with sizes ranging from 15.0 mm to 23.7 mm. One beautiful Levallois micropoint not in pieces. It is 21.8 mm long, 17.3 mm wide and weighs 1.1 grams. The impacts show that two of the micropoints have longitudinal stress fractures. They display microscopic serial impact marks.
When averaged across the broken specimens, this resulted in an average weight of 1.4 grams (min: 0.7 g, max: 2.5 g). The findings suggest that all of these tools were deliberately manufactured to act as projectile armatures. Their near microlithic form precludes attachment to anything other than arrow/bolt-like shafts.
The findings gathered from Obi-Rakhmat are an indication of the technological prowess of early humans. The development of every sophisticated weapons system you can think of since that time would point to the opposite outcome.
“Arrow heads at Obi-Rakhmat (Uzbekistan) 80 ka ago?” – Hugues Plisson et al
Implications for Understanding Early Human Innovation
Based on this exciting new finding, site at Obi-Rakhmat gives us an incredibly important spotlight into the hunting routines of Central Asia’s prehistoric population. Bladelets occur with these micropoints, indicating a varied weaponry strategy. Photo by National Archery in the Schools Program. This variety includes special types of armatures designed for hunting. This complexity is an indication that early humans were testing various designs and materials to make their tools more effective for hunting.
The archaeological layers at Obi-Rakhmat indicate an increased deep time redundancy of these technologies by their accumulated long history of re-use. These results confirm the importance of the site as a cosmopolitan center of tool production and innovation during its period of occupation.
“Arrow heads at Obi-Rakhmat (Uzbekistan) 80 ka ago?” – PLOS One
Future Research Directions
The authors are looking forward to pursuing further excavations at the Obi-Rakhmat rock shelter. They hope to study more sedimentary layers to better understand the technological changes of hominins. Each layer that we’ve studied has provided us with irrefutable evidence. This information supports the idea that elaborate weapon systems were central to pursuit hunting strategies in the Upper Paleolithic.
Further study at Obi-Rakhmat will add to our knowledge about the human technological evolutionary path. It could shed light on socio-political organization and relationships between early human populations within this part of the Americas.