Obi-Rakhmat rock shelter in Uzbekistan, micro-point hafting and main game hunted around the site 80,000 years ago (artwork courtesy of Malvina Baumann). Malvina Baumann, Fourni par l'auteurUnretouched triangular microlithic projectile points have been identified from their impact traces in the oldest occupation layers of the Obi-Rakhmat site in Uzbekistan, dating to 80,000 years ago. Their size corresponds to small arrowheads, which are directly comparable to those produced by Homo sapiens during an incursion into Neanderthal territory in the Rhône Valley, 25,000 years later. This new study, published in PLOS One journal, provides a strong argument that could rewrite history on Homo sapiens‘ first settlement in Europe.The chrono-cultural and anthropological frameworks of prehistory, along with the evolutionary models they inspired, were first created in Western Europe, especially France, in the second half of the 19th century. They were initially linear and Eurocentric: Cro-Magnons (European early modern humans), descending from Neanderthals, laid the foundations for the civilisational superiority claimed by this part of the world at the time. It was not until a century later that the African origin of Homo sapiens, as well as the technological and social features that characterised the Western Upper Palaeolithic (symbolic productions, long-distance networks, and diversified lithic and bone tools and weapons), were recognised.The earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Australia, dating back around 65,000 years (Clarkson et al., 2017), predates that found in Europe by 10 millennia, while the ways in which our ancestors initially colonised Western Eurasia over 45,000 years ago remain contentious. The temporal alignment of the earliest European Upper Palaeolithic settlements with those in the Levant, which are considered the closest in terms of typology and technology, is still not satisfactory. This is either because the Levantine data comes from old excavations or because it does not fit into the supposed direct lineage. Despite its geographical proximity to Africa, the origins of the Initial Upper Palaeolithic in the Levant are themselves uncertain. This is why the possibility of a Central Asian origin suggested by archaeologist Ludovic Slimak in 2023 (Slimak, 2023) deserves attention.A site in Central Asia View from the Obi-Rakhmat rock shelter on the end of the Tien Shan. Hugues Plisson. Fourni par l'auteur Depending on climatic conditions, Central Asia has served as a corridor facilitating movement between the western and eastern parts of the continent or as a refuge zone. The archaeological record in this region is limited but includes several significant Palaeolithic sites.Among them is the Obi-Rakhmat rock shelter in Uzbekistan, discovered in 1962, whose latest excavation campaigns were led by Andrei Krivoshapkin. At the south-western end of the Talassky Alatau range of the Tien Shan mountains, at an altitude of 1,250 metres, the settlement provides a remarkably consistent lithic industry, comprising points, large blades, and bladelets across a stratigraphic sequence spanning over 10 metres, dating from approximately 80,000 to 40,000 years ago. This industry was initially classified as part of the Initial Upper Palaeolithic but it appears to derive from the Levantine Early Middle Palaeolithic. The early Middle Palaeolithic, associated with archaic Homo sapiens at the Misliya cave (Hershkovitz et al., 2018), disappeared from the Near East around 100,000 years ago. At Obi-Rakhmat, the skull remains of a child found in a layer dating back ~70,000 years show features considered to be Neanderthal and others to be anatomically modern, a combination that could be the result of hybridisation.Massive blades but microlithic points Elements of lithic industry from layer 21 at Obi-Rakhmat: unretouched blades (1-2), large retouched blade (3), pointed retouched blades (4-5), impacted retouched points (6-8), unretouched Levallois micro-point (9), unretouched impacted micro-points (10-11). Hugues Plisson. Fourni par l'auteur In this context, our international multidisciplinary team has identified tiny, unretouched, triangular projectile points within the lithic debris of the oldest stratigraphic layers. These points were distinguished based on their macroscopic and microscopic impact marks, which were compared to experimental reference data. Due to their small size (less than 2 cm in width and weighing only a few grams) and brittleness, they would have been unsuitable for mounting on heavy shafts. The width of their cutting edges corresponds to the diameter of arrow shafts documented ethnographically for low-poundage bows, consistent with transcultural invariants rooted in physical and ballistic constraints. Two unretouched micro-points recovered from layer 21 of Obi-Rakhmat. One is intact, while the other is broken and shows scratches resulting from use as a projectile head. The matchstick illustrates their small size. Fourni par l'auteur A question of ballisticsThrown piercing weapons are complex systems whose components are not interchangeable from one type of weapon to another, as they meet different requirements in terms of intensity and nature of stress.The significant impact force of spears held or thrown by hand makes the robustness of the weapon an essential parameter, both in terms of effectiveness and the hunter’s survival, with mass ensuring robustness, impact force and penetration. In contrast, the penetration of light projectiles shot from a long distance depends on their sharpness, because their kinetic energy, which is much lower, comes mainly from their speed, which, unlike mass, decreases very rapidly along the trajectory and in the target. As this speed cannot be achieved by the extension of the human arm alone, it necessarily depends on the use of a throwing instrument. Arrowheads and spearheads or javelin heads are therefore not designed according to the same criteria and cannot be mounted on the same shafts, the dimensions and degree of elasticity of which are also essential in terms of ballistics. Thus, as in palaeontology, where the shape of a tooth reveals the type of diet and suggests the mode of locomotion, the characteristics of a point provide clues as to the type of weapon of which it is the wounding element.Weaponry specific to ‘Sapiens’?The tiny size of Obi-Rakhmat’s points cannot be regarded as a default choice, not only because there is no shortage of good-quality lithic raw material on site from which large blades were made, but microscopic examination of traces of use or wear also shows that within this same assemblage there are also much more robust retouched points (15 to 20 times heavier and 3 to 4 times thicker), similarly impacted by use as axial projectile points (the size of spearheads or javelin heads).Returning to the bibliography and our own work on Middle Palaeolithic tools (Plisson et Beyries, 1998), we found that the presence in the same assemblage of various types of projectile points and inserts, some of which were microlithic and produced for this purpose, is only known at Homo sapiens sites. The oldest documented occurrences are in South Africa in the Pre-Still Bay (more than 77,000 years old) and later cultural layers of the Sibudu cave. In contrast, lithic points damaged by use as projectile heads are rare in the Neanderthal record. When present, they tend to be large and do not notably differ in size, manufacture or type from points used for activities other than hunting, such as gathering plants or butchery. This difference in the design of tools and weapons takes on anthropological significance. Levallois points from the Um El Tlel site in Syria, from the Late Middle Palaeolithic period in the Levant attributed to Neanderthals. From left to right: graphic reconstruction based on a fragment found embedded in a donkey vertebra, plant knife blade, butcher knife blade. These multipurpose points are 2 to 3 times wider than the micro-points from Obi-Rakhmat. Hugues Plisson. Fourni par l'auteur Given their respective dates, the distance between South Africa and Central Asia (14,000 km) and the difference in the manufacture of the Obi-Rakhmat and Sibudu weapon heads (unretouched knapped stone points vs. shaped stone points or retouched inserts, shaped bone points), the hypothesis of independent centres of invention is the most likely.From the foothills of the Tien Shan to the Rhône Valley 25,000 years laterThe micro-points from Obi-Rakhmat have no known equivalents in the Eurasian Middle Palaeolithic, except for identical projectile points identified by Traceology expert Laure Metz (Lewis et al., 2023) at the Mandrin site, in the Rhône Valley, France, in a layer dating to approximately 54,000 years ago – some ten thousand years before the disappearance of local Neanderthals. Notably, a Homo sapiens milk tooth was also recovered from this layer (Zanolli et al., 2022. The similarity between the micro-points from Obi-Rakhmat and Mandrin, despite being separated by more than 6,000 km and 25 millennia, is such that they could be interchanged without any detail other than the stone betraying the substitution. Morphological and functional similarity between the micro-points of Obi-Rakhmat and Mandrin, broken by their use as projectile head. The location and extent of their fracture (highlighted in red and blue and macroscopic detail) are indicative of axial impact. Hugues Plisson. Fourni par l'auteur Recent work published by paleogeneticists Leonardo Vallini (Vallini et al., 2024) and Stéphane Mazières (Mazières et al., 2025) defines the Persian Plateau, on the north-eastern edge of which Obi-Rakhmat is located, as a population hub where the ancestors of all present-day non-Africans lived between the early phases of expansion out of Africa – long before the Upper Palaeolithic – and the wider colonisation of Eurasia. This resource-rich environment may have provided a refuge conducive to demographic regeneration after the genetic bottleneck of the exit from Africa, interaction between groups and, consequently, technical innovations. On either side of the Persian plateau (orange box), genetically identified as a refuge area for the concentration and demographic development of first Homo sapiens who left Africa, Obi-Rakhmat and Mandrin share the same micro-projectile points, 25,000 years and 6,000 km apart. Hugues Plisson. Fourni par l'auteur Obi-Rakhmat and Mandrin may represent two geographical and temporal milestones within the same process of dispersal, as suggested by Ludovic Slimak (Slimak, 2023), characterised by the dissemination of a key technological innovation unique to Homo sapiens. So far unnoticed because they are unretouched, tiny and fragmentary, it is likely that the micro-projectile points for which recognition criteria have now been defined will begin to appear at sites between Central Asia and the western Mediterranean.Premises for a new scenario of the western peopling by ‘Homo sapiens’This discovery is stimulating in several ways.It validates the consistency of the research conducted at the Mandrin site, which came to the conclusion that Sapiens armed with bows made a brief incursion into Neanderthal territory. Several elements of this study had been criticised (Klaric et al., 2024)– which is, however, normal in science when a new proposal deviates too far from established knowledge – but its predictive dimension had not been considered at the time.The similarity between Mandrin and Obi-Rakhmat’s micro-points cannot be a mere coincidence. It is not only their shape that is similar, but also the way they are made, which requires real expertise, as evidenced by the meticulous preparation of their striking platform and their function. One could debate the appropriate instrument for shooting arrows armed with such tiny tips, the bow being in filigree, or whether it is preferable to remain cautious and speak only of shooting, but this already contrasts with what we know about Neanderthal hunting weapons and their design.Another remarkable aspect, which is still relatively uncommon, is the convergence and complementarity of data from material culture and from our genetic memory, which did not influence each other given the dates of the respective studies and publications. Together, they sketch out a rewriting of the scenario of Homo sapiens’ arrival in Europe: it was thought that he came directly from Africa by the shortest route 45,000 years ago, but we now discover that he had been established in the heart of the Eurasian continent for a long time, well before expanding in search of more territories. A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.