The first evidence in Europe that man was hunting mammoths discovered

Science in Poland ^ | January 7, 2019 | szz/ zan/ kap/ tr. RL

[SunkenCiv]

In the ice age, the inhabitants of today`s Europe were hunting mammoths with javelins. The first direct evidence of this is a fragment of a 25,000 years old flint head discovered in Kraków, stuck in a mammoth rib... archaeologists have discovered the remains of at least 110 mammoths from approx. 25,000 years ago.

"Among tens of thousands of bones, during a detailed analysis of the remains, I came across a damaged mammoth rib. It turned out that a fragment of a flint arrowhead was stuck in it. This is the first such find from the Ice Age in Europe!" - told PAP Dr. Piotr Wojtal from the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals PAS in Kraków...

Wojtal reminds that the scientific community has been discussing for years how our ancestors killed mammoths. According to some researchers, these animals were killed by trickery - chasing them to the pits or towards bluffs, from which they would fall. Others say that people focused on weaker or sick animals. Some think that mammoths were hunted.

"We finally have a +smoking gun+, the first direct evidence of how these animals were hunted" - notes the archaeozoologist.

So far, similar finds are known only from two Siberian sites.

The bone with the flint blade was discovered already in 2002. Since bone damage is small, it was only discovered in February 2018 during detailed archaeozoological analyses. During this research, each of tens of thousands of bone fragments is carefully inspected.

The blade fragment preserved in the bone is only 7 mm long. Scientists believe that it is a flint tip broken off at the moment of driving a spear into the body of a mammoth.

[Recompennation]

were hunting mammoths with javelins.
Wow, AMC was around a lot longer than I thought...
Ha ha, I’m ancient enough to appreciate the humor

[Openurmind]

I think the Atlatl and darts worked quite well for a delivery device so there was no real need to improve these much. What they did do was concentrate efforts into improving methods of knapping lithics and the quality of lithics for the points.

The earliest bows found are dated to around 18,000 years ago. But they spread pretty slow. In fact they didn’t come to the Americas in the arctic until around 200 Ad. But even then when the Spanish went to conquer South America in the 1500’s the South American indigenous were still using the atlatl and darts.

[Openurmind]

That’s a fact. lol

[central_va]

You said "Homo Erectus"