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Tucked deep within a West Texas cave, archaeologists discovered what is likely the oldest intact weapon system ever found in North America.
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The roughly 6,500-year-old pieces include spear shafts, dart tips, and a lethal boomerang.
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Experts believe the cave was a type of depository used to repair ancient weapons.
A collection of 6,500-year-old wooden dart tips found deep within a Texas cave were likely, at one point in their usage, destined to be tinged with poison. Those darts were just part of an ancient hunting kit discovered by archaeologists—likely the oldest intact weapons stash ever found in North America.
Discovered in Big Bend National Park, about 30 miles from the U.S. border with Mexico, archaeologists got a rare glimpse of the lives of ancient hunters when they uncovered the pieces of tools and weapons left untouched for thousands of years, according to an announcement by the Center for Big Bend Studies.
The hunting kit—in as pristine of condition as a 6,500-year-old stash can be—features six stone-tipped dart points, four hardwood tips (these were the ones meant to be dipped in poison) a partial spear-thrower known as an atlatl, dart pieces meant to connect to an atlatl, and a tanned and folded antelope hide.
“If it really is a contemporaneous kit, it’s a pretty monumental finding,” Bryon Schroder, director of the Center for Big Bend Studies, told Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine. “We get these incredible snapshots of life, vignettes of how they lived, what the environment was, and how they responded to it.”
Looters have long traversed the cave system, but archaeologists from Sul Ross State University and the University of Kansas found a spot that they said hadn’t been disturbed. “We quickly found out that it’s really, really, really deep in that part of the site,” Schroeder told the New York Times. “The reason we were out there is to find really old stuff. So, we kept going deeper.”
Eventually, the team entered a partially collapsed cave that included the artifacts, a pile of preserved human waste, and the remnants of a small fire. “We were just stunned, because I’ve never even seen that stuff,” Schroeder said, noting the site was likely a location for hunters to repair damaged weapons. “A person came to the back of the cave and went through their hunting gear piece by piece: ‘This is good. This is not good. I need to remake this leather pouch a little bit.’ And then went on their way. But that one small act is going to have profound implications in understanding a wide range of topics, including the environment.”
The dart-delivery system wasn’t complete, but enough pieces were present that experts believe they know what it looked like. The partial atlatl was originally believed to be the oldest found in North America, and a study in the Journal of Big Bend Studies highlighted this part of the find, but a slightly older one was found in Utah since that study published. Still, this is likely the oldest collection of weapons found in North America, as the other parts of the dart system (including the stone and wood tips) were associated with the atlatl, and some still had the points embedded in shafts.
Once known as a rabbit stick, the straight-flying boomerang found as part of the collection is also a lethal weapon, and one of the oldest-known finds of its kind. Not like the toy designed to return to the thrower, the boomerang was a weaponized object robust enough to take out small game.
“They heated a green branch of sapling over hot coals until boiling sap and steam came out both ends, then bent it around a form to cool and dry and work into an airfoil,” Devin Pettigrew, assistant professor of anthropology and an expert in ancient weaponry at Sul Ross State University, told Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine. “With a lot of use, the impacts make the cracks worse until eventually the weapon splits in half.”
The folded antelope hide was likely either a bag or piece of clothing. It even had hairs still on it when found. “Somebody folded that hide up and sat that right on top of this rock,” Schroeder said. “And nobody touched it for 6,000 years.”
The team still needs to analyze the remainder of the weapons, and plans to study the human waste to understand both diet and DNA. “It’s kind of rare,” Pettigrew said, “to get this kind of perspective of ancient people.”
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