APPARENTLY, WE’RE A MORE PRECOCIOUS SPECIES THAN I HAD REALIZED: Human Ancestors Made Deadly Stone-Tipped Spears 500,000 Years Ago. “Human ancestors were fashioning sophisticated hunting weapons half a million years ago. An analysis of stone points from a site in South Africa called Kathu Pan 1 indicates that they were attached to shafts of wood and used as spears. The finding pushes the earliest appearance of hafted multicomponent tools back by some 200,000 years.”