Hunting from a distance seems a pretty reasonable—not to mention a much safer—alternative to hunting in close proximity to a hulking mammoth.

But exactly when mankind made that evolutionary leap is a question TRU archaeologist Dr. Karl Hutchings hopes to one day answer.

Hutchings, who was a guest on CBC’s Quirks & Quarks on Feb. 7, made a remarkable discovery in 2013 upon analyzing obsidian artifacts thought to be spear tips recovered by colleagues from the Gademotta Formation, a Middle Stone Age archaeological site in the Main Ethiopian Rift Valley in East Africa. Micro fractures on those tips produced fracture velocity data from throwing, rather than thrusting, providing evidence to show that humans used spear throwers as early as 279,000 years ago.

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“I’m trying to answer some pretty interesting questions about human evolution,” he said, explaining that the term ‘modern human’ in this instance has to do with cognitive abilities rather than the physical and biological part of our species’ evolution, since the development and use of complex tools requires sophisticated thinking.

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