40,000-year-old mammoth tusk boomerang is oldest in Europe — and possibly the world

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An unusual Tusk Boomerang boomerang discovered in a cave in Poland is 40,000 years – which makes it the first example of Europe of this complex tool and perhaps the oldest boomerang in the world, according to a new study.

“The ivory object has all the characteristics of the boomerangs used by the Aborigines in Queensland today”, co-author of the study Paweł valde-nowakAn archaeologist at Jagielliie University in Krakow, Poland, told Live Science in an email. “Its arched shape, its section and its flat dimensions correspond to the Queensland boomerangs which do not return to the launcher,” he said.

The new study, published Wednesday June 25 in the journal Plos ashows that curved launch tools have been invented in Europe much earlier than expected.

The crescent artifact – which measures about 28 inches (72 centimeters) long – was found in the Obłazowa cave in southern Poland 40 years ago with human bones, fox hook -based pendants and stone blade tools, all covered with red in red ocher. Valde-Nowak and his colleagues published their original results in the review Nature In 1987, suggesting that the cave was used Neanderthal and the first humans in the middle of the stem Paleolithic periods (300,000 to 12,000 years).

The Upper Paleolithic (50,000 to 12,000 years ago) is a key period in human history, because humans have invented new forms of tools, cave and personal decoration. And at the Obłazowa cave, Valde-Nowak saw a clear difference between the discoveries covered with ocher and the previous artifacts on the same site.

“In my opinion, it is absolutely clear proof of behaviors that are unknown to us, early practices Homo sapiensWho contrast strongly with everything we have found in the deeper cultural layers of Obłazowa, the layers left by the Neanderthals, “said Valde-Nowak.

In relation: This man was killed by Brutal Boomerang Blow 800 years ago

To better understand the chronology of the cave of Obłazowa, in 1996 The researchers carried out a Carbon-14 analysis On the biological remains discovered in the cave, including the ivory boomerang. However, at 18,000 years old, the boomerang was “unexpectedly”, raising that the results had been biased by contamination by adhesives or conservation equipment, researchers wrote in the new study.

The evidence of conventional indigenous boomerangs and launch sticks date back at least 20,000 years, according to the Australian National Museum. These boomerangs are multi-use tools, often used for hunting, fighting or excavation. But the people of the world 300,000 years.

In the new analysis of the discoveries of the Obłazowa cave, the researchers have undertaken DNA And the radiocarbon analyzes of a human bone of the boomerang layer and determined that the person was a modern human who lived at least 31,000 years ago. The researchers also analyzed a dozen animal bones, but not the boomerang itself, “to avoid new damage to this very significant artifact,” they wrote in the study.

A group of animal bones found in the same layer as the boomerang dated approximately 41,500 years ago. Given this series of radiocarbon dates and the depths of the bones in the layer, the researchers created a statistical model for the date of the boomerang, noting that it was definitively made more than 35,000 years ago and that it was most likely sculpted between 42,365 and 39,355 years.

“Our analysis on the boomerang found on the Obłazowa site has given revolutionary information about its age,” wrote the researchers, positioning boomerang “as potentially one of the oldest specimens in Europe, and perhaps on a global scale, thus putting light on technical skills and cognitive advances in cognitive advances in cognitive advances Homo sapiens in the development of these complex tools. “”