Punctured Horse Shoulder Blade

Punctured Horse Shoulder Blade

Exhibit item

Discovered by: 

A team led by Mark Roberts

Age: 

About 500,000 years old

Site: 

Boxgrove, England

Hunting of large animals with spears

The semicircular wound on this  fragment of a horse shoulder blade was made by a weapon such as a spear, indicating it was killed by early humans. Other horse bones from the same site have butchery marks from stone tools.

Image Credit: James Di Loreto, & Donald H. Hurlbert, Smithsonian Institution