The selection of stone “projectile points” found at an exaction site in Idaho was found to be 3,000 years older than any similar discoveries made in North America.
Each weapon, it is thought, was most likely attached to some sort of dart that would have been used in conflict and hunting.
The remarkable discovery was made by archaeologists at Oregon State University (OSU) who have been radiocarbon-dating the objects.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the discovery came in the fact that each object had surprising similarities with weapons found in northern Asia.
The researchers now hope that their work will fill in the gaps of how ancient humans created their tools and used them — and reveal potential links between ancient Asian and American people.
Professor Loren Davis, an archaeologist at OSU and head of the group that found the ancient artefacts, noted the revelatory nature of the haul given that many of the objects resemble ones found in Hokkaido, Japan, from 16,000-20,000 years ago.
The presence of such similar weapons feeds into the theory that early genetic and cultural connections exist between the ice age peoples of Northeast Asia and North America.
Archaeologists found 13 full and partially-formed weapons, ranging from 1.2cm to 5cm in length.
They have been dated to 15,700 years ago, which comes far before the fluted stone points previously found in the US.
Crucially, they also predate any similar weapons found in the same Cooper’s Ferry excavation site by 2,300 years.
“From a scientific point of view, these discoveries add important details about what the archaeological record of the earliest peoples of the Americas looks like,” said Prof Davis.
“It’s one thing to say, ‘we think that people were here in the Americas 16,000 years ago’, but it’s another thing to measure it by finding well-made artefacts they left behind.”
The objects were found on traditional Nez Percé land known to the tribe as the ancient village of Nipéhe, a site which is currently in public ownership by the Federal Bureau of Land Management.
Prof Davis said: “The earliest peoples of North America possessed cultural knowledge that they used to survive and thrive over time. Some of this knowledge can be seen in the way people made stone tools, such as the projectile points found at the Cooper’s Ferry site.”
He added: “By comparing these points with other sites of the same age and older, researchers can then get a sense of the social networks where this technological knowledge was shared between peoples.”
The items, uncovered between 2012 and 2017 and published in the journal Science Advances in 2022, are characterised by two distinct ends.
While one end is sharpened, another is stemmed, and each has a symmetrical bevelled shape, a sloping edge rather than a standard squared one.
Prof Davis believes they were most likely attached to darts rather than arrows or spears.
