Humans used whale bones to make tools 20,000 years ago

Western Europeans crafted hunting weapons out of bones from whales stranded on the Atlantic shoreline between 20,000 and 14,000 years ago, researchers report May 27 in Nature Communications.

Previously excavated finds at Stone Age cave and rock–shelter sites running from northwestern Spain to southwestern France, some located as far as about 300 kilometers inland, represent the oldest known examples of whale bone tools, say archaeologist Jean-Marc Pétillon of the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France, and colleagues. Implements made of whale bones in other parts of the world, such as the South Pacific islands, date to no more than several thousand years old.

Seaside scavengers in Western Europe collected bones from the bodies of at least five whale species that had washed ashore, the scientists say. Whale bone tools at the sites that the team studied mainly consisted of spear points and spear shafts.

Aside from those implements, a cave near Spain’s northern coast contained whale bones that had been intentionally broken to obtain fatty oil, a nutritious addition to Stone Age diets, the investigators say. Bone fragments at that site came from at least two whales, one dating to around 15,500 years ago and the other to about 15,000 years ago, Pétillon says.

Although rising sea levels have submerged ancient seashore sites, increasing evidence shows that African Homo sapiens and European Neandertals ate a range of seafood. The new whale-scavenging study helps show that “Late Paleolithic [Stone Age] humans regularly frequented the seashore and used its resources,” Pétillon says.

His team analyzed species-specific protein sequences extracted from 83 bone implements recovered at 26 sites and 90 bone fragments found at a coastal cave. Results pegged 71 tools and 60 fragments as having come from marine species that included sperm whales, fin whales, blue whales, gray whales and either right whales or bowhead whales. Protein data cannot distinguish between the latter two whale species.

Of 37 whale bone artifacts that yielded radiocarbon dates, many ranged from 17,500 to 16,000 years old, a period when regional trade in these implements peaked, the researchers suspect. Few whale bone tools in their sample dated to later than 16,000 years ago.

Seashore strandings of whales may have been infrequent, but even small numbers of hunter-gatherers could have rapidly organized whale scavenging expeditions, Pétillon speculates.