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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
