News Anthropology

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

Beached whales provided Stone Age humans with bones to fashion into hunting weapons

A pair of hands holding a spearlike tool made of whale bone, about a foot long

Researchers have identified the world’s oldest known whale bone tools. This spear point made of gray whale bone, from a French rock–shelter, dates to between 18,000 and 17,500 years old.

Alexandre Lefebvre

By Bruce Bower

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.