Credited to Democratic Republic of the Congo. When the points were dated to about 90,000 years, archaeologists doubted the age because the tools seemed too advanced for the period. Further finds of similar harpoons at the site supported the dates.
How it began
People living at Katanda, on the Semliki River in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, carved barbed points from bone about 90,000 to 80,000 years ago. Archaeologists Alison Brooks and John Yellen found the first point in 1988. The team published the finds in the journal Science in 1995 as a Middle Stone Age worked bone industry from the Upper Semliki Valley, then in Zaire.
How it works
Each point is a shaped piece of bone with a row of barbs cut along it, so that once it pierces a fish it does not slip back out. The Katanda site is littered with catfish bones, and the points are the right size for adult catfish. People there speared prehistoric catfish weighing as much as 68 kilograms, enough to feed 80 people for two days.
Who pushed back
The age of the points was questioned. Dating by direct and indirect means indicated about 90,000 years or older, and many archaeologists found that hard to accept because barbed bone points seemed too advanced for human cultures of that time. The site later yielded more harpoons of the same kind, and the dates were upheld.
What lasted
The points are evidence that people in Central Africa made special tools for fishing far earlier than had been assumed, and that groups probably returned to the river each year for the catfish run. Later humans used harpoons to hunt large, fast marine mammals. The find sits near Ishango, another early lakeshore fishing site.
