Scientists Discover the Oldest Known Tools Made From Whale Bones, Crafted in Western Europe 20,000 Years Ago
Stone Age humans scavenged the skeletons of several whale species along the Bay of Biscay in what is now southwestern France and northern Spain, according to a new study
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Between 14,000 and 20,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers living in Western Europe made tools from the bones of whales that had been stranded along the Atlantic coast. After dating those implements, scientists now say they represent the oldest known evidence of humans crafting tools from whale remains.
They shared their findings in a new paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
Archaeologists have long known that early humans made use of whatever inland resources they could, including the bones of land-dwelling mammals. But the new findings add to the growing body of evidence that our ancestors “regularly frequented the seashore and used its resources,” too, says study co-author Jean-Marc Pétillon, an archaeologist at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès and the French National Center for Scientific Research, to Science News’ Bruce Bower.
For the study, researchers took another look at 83 previously excavated bone tools from 26 caves and rock shelters along the Bay of Biscay in southwestern France and northern Spain. The tools—mostly spear shafts and projectile points used for hunting reindeer and bison—were thought to have been crafted from whale bones, based on their porous appearance. But researchers didn’t know for certain.
To confirm this hunch, the team extracted small samples from each tool and analyzed their collagen protein sequences, which act as signatures for specific animal species. Their analysis revealed that 71 of the tools were made from the bones of cetaceans, the group of marine mammals that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. Of these, 66 were identified as whales. Just under half were crafted from sperm whale bones, while others had come from fin, gray, blue and either right or bowhead whales.
Stone Age hunter-gatherers may have been particularly interested in sperm whale skeletons, because the creatures are the only toothed species of the group, featuring long, straight jaw bones—perfect for crafting hunting tools, the researchers write in the paper.
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Several of the whale species identified in the study still live in the Bay of Biscay, even though the modern climate is warmer and sea levels are higher today. That was an intriguing realization for the researchers.
“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 tells Popular Science’s Laura Baisas. “In the same period, continental faunas are very different: the ungulates hunted include reindeer, saiga antelopes, bison, etc., all disappeared from Western Europe today.”
The researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the tools. The oldest implement dated to around 19,600 to 20,200 years ago, while several others dated to between 16,000 and 17,500 years ago.
The team also investigated 90 bone fragments found in a coastal cave in northern Spain. Instead of shaping these whale bones into tools, Stone Age humans probably crushed them to obtain the nutritious, fatty oil inside between 15,000 and 15,500 years ago.
“Humans and whales have clearly been encountering one another for a long time,” says Vicki Szabo, a historian at Western Carolina University who was not involved with the research, to the Associated Press’ Adithi Ramakrishnan.
Stone Age humans probably weren’t hunting the whales, experts say. Rather, they were likely taking advantage of any remains that ended up on the shore. These stranding or beaching events could’ve attracted crowds of scavengers.
“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 tells New Scientist’s Sophie Berdugo. “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.”
