An international research group has established that ancient people in Uzbekistan began using bows and arrows approximately 80,000 years ago. This is one of the earliest pieces of evidence for the use of such weapons outside Africa, reports TASS, citing the press service of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography (IAET) of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"While in Africa remote hunting was known to modern humans already in the Middle Paleolithic (70-80 thousand years ago), its emergence in Eurasia has traditionally been associated only with the Late Paleolithic, when technology reached its peak. The findings that shift this understanding were made at the stone age site of Obi-Rahmat in Uzbekistan, dating back to around 80,000 years ago," the institute's statement reads.

The Obi-Rahmat cave is a multilayered hunting settlement with cultural layers reaching 10 meters in depth, covering a period from 40,000 to 80,000 years ago. In the lower layers, small triangular stone tools up to 3 cm in size were found. Their investigation using the method of traceology helped determine their purpose.

Artifacts showed wear patterns characteristic of projectile tools. Their shape and presumed sizes of the shafts indicate their use as arrowheads. The institute noted that such findings significantly alter the timeline for the emergence of bow hunting outside of Africa.

"The discovery is particularly valuable because remains of people with a mosaic set of traits—combining features of both Neanderthals and early modern humans—were found in the cave. This makes the discovery crucial for understanding how and by whom complex hunting technologies were mastered in the deep past," the institute emphasized.