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.
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