And they were not primitive substitutes for stone points that people fell back on when good knapping material was unavailable.

They were a parallel technology — a different solution to the problem of making a weapon that could penetrate the thick hide and reach the vital organs of a very large animal.

Why Bone Is A Serious Engineering Choice

The popular imagination tends to associate bone tools with primitive conditions — the club and the crude knife of the prehistoric caveman who lacked the sophisticated technology to make something better.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of bone as a raw material, one that the evidence from the Manis site helps to correct.