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3 days ago
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Archaeolgists Make Surprising Discovery About Ice Age Hunting Tools
A recent study published in Nature Communications has found the first-known evidence of human beings manufacturing tools out of whale bones. Throughout 26 rock shelters and caves within northern Spain and southwestern France, researchers found 173 bone specimens, including 83 tools and 90 fragments. An analysis using Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) found that 131 of those specimens were whale bones belonging to sperm whales, gray whales, blue whales, fin whales, and right or bowhead whales.'Our study reveals that the bones came from at least five species of large whales, the oldest of which date to approximately 19,000–20,000 years ago,' lead author Jean-Marc Pétillon said in a press release. 'These represent some of the earliest known evidence of humans using whale remains as tools.' The bones bear little sign of water wear, which means they were likely harvested from animals which had washed up on the shore rather than deep-sea hunting. Many of the tools were dated between 17,500 and 16,000 years ago, though the oldest specimen found dates back 20,000 years. In particular, the bones of sperm whales were found to be particularly popular in fashioning spears and other hunting instruments. Over 40 percent of projectile points and 73 percent of foreshafts analyzed were created from sperm whale bones.'What was more surprising to me, as an archaeologist more accustomed to terrestrial faunas, was that these whale species remained the same despite the great environmental difference between the Late Pleistocene and today,' Pétillon told Popular Science. 'In the same period, continental faunas are very different: the ungulates hunted include reindeer, saiga antelopes, bison, etc., all disappeared from Western Europe today.'Pétillon believes ancient people came from far and wide to scavenge whale bones and other parts when they washed up on shore. With further research, he and his team hope to deduce why tools constructed from whale bone declined so rapidly 16,000 years ago. 'The news of a stranding travels fast first, because it smells a lot [from a] long distance away, so people would concentrate from quite far,' Pétillon told New Scientist. 'So, it might not have been the main driver of people going to the seashore, but when that happened, it probably had an influence on the movement of the people who probably changed their planned pattern of movement to go there.'Archaeolgists Make Surprising Discovery About Ice Age Hunting Tools first appeared on Men's Journal on May 30, 2025
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6 days ago
- Lifestyle
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Oldest-known whale bone tools discovered in a Spanish cave
Prehistoric stone tools are among some of the oldest and important pieces of evidence we have of a time when our species began to evolve a higher level of intelligence. Many of these tools were also made from animal bones–including the bones of some of the biggest animals on the planet. New research finds that humans living up to 20,000 years ago may have been making tools out of whale bones. The discovery not only adds more to the story of early human tool use, but gives a glimpse into ancient whale ecology. The findings are detailed in a study published May 27 in the journal Nature Communications. 'That humans frequented the seashore, and took advantage of its resources, is probably as old as humankind,' Jean-Marc Pétillon, an archaeologist at the Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès in France and study co-author, tells Popular Science. 'There is evidence of whale scavenging at the site of Dungo 5 in Angola dating to 1 million years.' For our Paleolithic ancestors living in coastal areas, the sturdy bones of large whales were potentially an excellent resource for various tools. However, many prehistoric coastal archaeological sites are fragile and are at risk of rising sea levels, making reconstructing the past interactions between marine mammals and humans a challenge for scientists.. 'The tools were dated between 20,000 and 16,000 years before [the] present, a period way before the invention of agriculture, and during which all human groups in the world lived a life of nomadic hunter-gatherers,' says Pétillon. 'Climatically, this is the last part of the last glaciation, with a climate much colder than today.' That colder climate brought a sea level that was roughly almost 400 feet lower than it is today. With this change in sea level, we have no direct evidence of the human occupations on the shore, since the rise in sea level either wiped them out or the settlements lay buried under 300 or so feet of water. With this lack of evidence Paleolithic people have historically been viewed as inland hunters. Those living in present day western Europe would have hunted red deer, reindeer, bison, horse, and ibex. While they did hunt inland, there is a growing body of evidence from the last 20 years showing that they also took advantage of the Paleolithic seashore. 'There are studies showing that people also gathered seashells, hunted seabirds, fished marine fish, etc., as a complement to terrestrial diet, and these studies were made possible because Paleolithic people carried remains of marine origin away from the seashore, into inland sites,' explains Pétillon. 'Our study adds whales to the lot. It is one more contribution showing that Late Paleolithic humans also regularly frequented the seashore and used its resources.' [ Related: Ice age humans made needles from animal bones, archeologists discover. ] In the new study, the team analyzed 83 bone tools that were excavated from sites around Spain's Bay of Biscay and 90 additional bones uncovered from Santa Catalina Cave in Spain. They used mass spectrometry and radiocarbon dating to identify which species the bones belonged to and estimate the age of the samples. The bones come from at least five species of large whales–sperm, fin, blue, gray, and either right whales or bowheads. The latter two species are indistinguishable using this technique. The oldest whale specimens are dated to roughly 19,000 to 20,000 years ago, representing some of the earliest known evidence of humans using the remains of whales to make tools. Some of the whale bone points themselves were over 15 inches long. 'Most of the objects made of whale bone are projectile points, part of the hunting equipment. They can be very long and thick, and were probably hafted on spear-style projectiles rather than arrows (and the use of the spearthrower is documented in this period),' says Pétillon. 'The main raw material used to manufacture projectile points at that period is antler, because it is less brittle and more pliable than bone, but whale bone was preferred in certain cases probably because of its large dimensions.' Most of these whale species identified in this study are still found in the Bay of Biscay and northeastern North Atlantic to this day. However, gray whales are now primarily limited to the North Pacific Ocean and Arctic. Additional chemical data from the tools also suggests that the feeding habits of the ancient whales were slightly different than those living today. According to the authors, this is likely due to behavioral or environmental changes. That the whales in the area have stayed relatively the same was particularly intriguing for Pétillon. 'What was more surprising to me—as an archeologist more accustomed to terrestrial faunas—was that these whale species remained the same despite the great environmental difference between the Late Pleistocene and today,' he says. 'In the same period, continental faunas are very different: the ungulates hunted include reindeer, saiga antelopes, bison, etc., all disappeared from Western Europe today.' Importantly, the findings here do not imply that active whaling was occurring. The techniques at the time would not allow humans to hunt sperm, blue, or fin whales and the team believes that these populations took advantage of whale strandings to harvest the bones for tools. 'The earliest evidence of active whaling is much younger, around 6,000 [years] before present in Korea (site of Bangudae) and maybe around 5,000 before present in Europe (Neolithic sites in the Netherlands),' says Pétillon. Future studies could look at the systematic way that these ancient Atlantic Europeans systematically used the seashore and how they developed their ocean hunting techniques.
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6 days ago
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Earliest Known Whale Bone Tools Discovered in Europe's Museum Collections
As far back as 20,000 years ago, humans living around the Bay of Biscay were crafting a variety of whale bones into tools, new research has revealed. A careful study of artifacts that have spent years tucked away in museum collections across Europe shows that the Magdalenian culture not only worked and used the bones of our planet's largest living beasts, they did so from a range of species, long before they were capable of actively hunting them. This discovery not only gives is crucial insight into the Magdalenians, but also reveals information about the changing ecology of the Bay of Biscay, off the coast of France and Spain. "I am an archaeologist more accustomed to terrestrial faunas. I am used to excavating cave sites in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and I work on the Magdalenian period which yielded a well-known cave art showing mostly ungulates (horse, bison, cervids, etc.)," University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès archaeologist and senior author Jean-Marc Pétillon told ScienceAlert. "The most exciting thing for me is to shed light on how much the sea, and the sea animals, might also have been important for the people at that time." The Magdalenian culture occupied coastal and inland regions of western Europe flourished some 19,000 to 14,000 years ago as the world was reaching the end of the last glacial period. They left behind a relatively rich archaeological record, but with limitations. Ancient coastal habitats are particularly prone to the ravages of time and the ocean, and most of the record of the use of coastal resources comes from inland, where artifacts had been transported. It's from these inland sites that archaeolologists excavated the Magdalenian artifacts: "more than 150 tools and projectile heads made of whale bone presumably of Atlantic origin, mostly found scattered from Asturias to the central part of the northern Pyrenean range," writes a team led by Krista McGrath of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Laura G. van der Sluis of the University of Vienna. Hunting and seafaring techniques to prey on whales would not emerge until thousands of years later, so the bones would have been gleaned opportunistically from whales stranding themselves on the seashore. The Magdalenians then used the foraged material to craft tools – mostly projectile points, Pétillon explained. "The main raw material used to manufacture the points at that period is antler (from reindeer or red deer), because it is less brittle and more pliable than land mammal bone," he said. "The fact that some points are made of whale bone shows that this material was preferred over antler in certain cases. It is probably because of its large dimensions: some of our whale bone points were more than 40 centimeters [16 inches] long, which is difficult to get with antler." To learn more about the timing and use of whale bone as a material, the researchers turned to two relatively modern techniques: a paleoproteomics method that analyzes collagen peptides in ancient samples to identify species; and micro-carbon dating, which is a variation of radiocarbon dating that requires less material. By carefully using these techniques on their samples, the researchers dated the bone tools to between 16,000 and 20,000 years ago. At least five different species of large whales contributed their bones to Magdalenian technology – which tells us about the ecology of the region during the last glacial period. "Our study shows that there was a large diversity of whale species in the Gulf of Biscay, northeastern North Atlantic, at that period. Most of the species we identified (sperm whale, blue whale, fin whale) are present in the North Atlantic today; in this perspective, their presence is not surprising," Pétillon said. "What was more surprising to me – as an archaeologist more accustomed to terrestrial faunas – was that these whale species remained the same despite the great environmental difference between the Late Pleistocene and today. In the same period, continental faunas are very different: the ungulates hunted include reindeer, saiga antelopes, bison, etc., all disappeared from Western Europe today." Interestingly, analysis of carbon and nitrogen isotopes absorbed from the environment as the animals fed show that these whales had a slightly different diet from those of the same species that are around today. It's impossible to determine what exactly this means – perhaps migration patterns were different, or food availability – but it does show a level of adaptability to changing circumstances, whatever those were. The presence of the whales in the Bay of Biscay would have been a draw for the Magdalenian culture, the researchers believe, offering a resource opportunity too good to pass up. Although whale strandings may not have been a frequent occurrence, they would have contributed to the list of benefits coastal living would have had to offer, playing a role in human mobility patterns in the region. It's a fascinating, multi-layered result that underscores the value of revisiting previously collected objects and seeing what new information we can discover with new techniques. "Even old collections, excavated more than one century ago with field methods now outdated, and stored in museums for a long time, can bring new scientific information when approached with the right analytical tools," Pétillon said. The research has been published in Nature Communications. Are Dogs Replacing Babies in Countries With Declining Birth Rates? Underwater Fossils Surface to Reveal a Lost World of Archaic Humans Scientists Discovered a Hidden Clue Why Men Are Taller Than Women
