4,000-Year-Old Flint Arrow Lodged in Human Rib Reveals Direct Evidence of Prehistoric Violence

Arkeonews ^ | 18 July 2025 | Oguz Buyukyildirim

[Vermont Lt]

This is a shock to some people? Just because the combatants aren’t using AK47s, doesn’t mean people did not fight over food, women, and children.

Human beings are nasty creatures. We’ve been domesticated.

[GingisK]

We’ve been domesticated

Civilization is just a thin veneer over savagery.

[PIF]

4,000-Year-Old Flint Arrow Lodged in Human Rib Reveals Direct Evidence of Prehistoric Violence

—
Shocking!!! People were violent 4000 years ago - who knew?

[mjp]

Prehistoric dating problems: "I found the perfect arrowhead… stuck in my rib. Guess my 'love' life was a bit more piercing than I expected!"

If ancient humans held a courtroom for this, it would be the first case of “Arrowful Intent.”

Archaeologists uncovered the ultimate ancient breakup message: “This is not working out — literally.”

Turns out, early highland community meetings weren’t just debates, they were pointedly violent discussions.

Imagine explaining that injury at the prehistoric doctor's office: “Doc, I tripped over a stone…actually, it stabbed me.”

The real takeaway? Humans have been throwing shade — and arrows — at each other for millennia.

Early humans putting the "point" in interpersonal conflict since 2000 BCE.

Wanna hear the oldest joke discovered? It’s about a wife who’s been blind in one eye for 20 years, and the husband only just noticed — talk about selective vision! Seems like blame and marital disputes go way back too

Arrow to the rib? Sounds like a prehistoric way of saying, Let's not spear your feelings too hard!

[delta7]

Best to consult our makers handbook on the human condition….human behavior will never change- right up to “ the End”.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks george76.

[GaltAdonis]

“…4,000-Year-Old Flint Arrow Lodged in Human Rib…”

.

Been lodged in there for 4000 years?
That wound has got to be infected by now…

[Rowdyone]

Maybe Dick Cheney was his hunting partner?

[Recompennation]

So,,, it does not take a gun to murder- kill each other, duh!

[MtnClimber]

Don’t run with an arrow in your hand,

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Nah, then it would have been in the face.

[TigersEye]

It was a hunting accident. It happens.

[Verginius Rufus]

Not the earliest evidence. Otzi the Iceman had an arrow wound which probably caused his death, and he died about 3300 B.C.

Since human societies in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, North and South America and Oceania all have a long history of violence, violence must have been common to people since before Homo sapiens spread from Africa to other continents. Perhaps there is a connection between violence between human beings and violence between human beings and animals (as in hunting).

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I have often seen on FB pages about American Indians that they did not kill, scalp, torture, cut people into pieces until the White Man arrived to show them how to do it. Problem is I have dozens of links to massacres in the New World long before the White Man was around to blame it on. Here are just a few.
How the tribes treated each other before the White Man arrived.
https://archive.news.wsu.edu/press-release/2014/08/04/wsu-researchers-see-violent-era-in-ancient-southwest/#.U9_iumNjYzJ

https://www.science20.com/news_articles/the_most_violent_era_in_america_was_before_europeans_arrived-141847
Who invented Scalping?
https://www.americanheritage.com/who-invented-scalping
http://www.dickshovel.com/scalp.html

Last days of the ancient Pueblos.
https://blairmastbaum.substack.com/p/the-terrifying-final-days-of-the
Crow Creek Massacre.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/9/crow-creek-massacre-in-1300s-remains-south-dakotas/
https://www.academia.edu/7907221/Mass_Grave_at_Crow_Creek_in_South_Dakota_Reveals_How_Indians_Massacred_Indians_in_14th_Century_Attack
Sacred Ridge Massacre.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/massacre-sacred-ridge
The Genocide Pit in Sacred Ridge, Colorado
https://strangesounds.org/2019/08/scary-archeology-genocide-pit-sacred-ridge-colorado.html

Ancient Massacre Discovered in New Mexico — Was It Genocide?
https://lostworlds.org/ancient-massacre-discovered-in-new-mexico-was-it-genocide/

The Gallina of New Mexico: a culture of violence?
https://mountainscholar.org/items/22dafb20-e69e-40c9-96cf-ddcdb14fff0f

[Magnum44]

Why assume it was violence. Could have been an accident.

[Magnum44]

Why assume it was violence. Could have been an accident.

[vpintheak]

Humans are violent. Who’d a thunk?
Ever since the fall, humans have invented many ways of killing.

[Revel]

I never would have believed in pre-historic violence if it were not for this evidence.

[central_va]

Have the police been notified?

[Paperpusher]

I have it on good authority that a man named Cain slew his brother Able over 4000 years ago in a fit of jealous rage. .