Our Palaeolithic ancestors used whale bones as tools

Archaeologists have unearthed what may be some of the earliest known tools crafted from whale bones. Dating back as far as 20,000 years, the discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of how early humans made use of marine resources that washed up on European shores. Jean-Marc Petillon, an archaeologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Toulouse, has been leading the research.

Jean-Marc - People who lived in Western Europe about 20,000 to 15,000 years ago made part of their equipment using bone and antler. About 15 years ago, we realised that some of them were made of whale bone—but that was just a visual identification. We couldn’t say more than “it’s a whale.” The others were rather poorly dated because many of them come from ancient excavations. What we did in this study is that we managed to analyse them directly by sampling a tiny part of each object to identify the species—the whale species—and to give them a date.

Chris - Where were the specimens recovered from?

Jean-Marc - The objects we analysed are from about 27 sites, mostly cave sites or rock shelter sites, either on the northern coast of Spain or in south-western France, particularly the Pyrenees area.

Chris - So, would the individuals who had these things have gone locally to get these whales? Or does this tell us anything about people trading objects like this, moving objects like this?

Jean-Marc - The place where they got the whale bones is obviously the shore of the Gulf of Biscay, and some of our sites are not very far from the shore. But many of them are up to several hundred kilometres from that prehistoric coastline. And it's not the first time that objects travelled far from their source. At that time, we have seashells, for example, that were perforated and used as pendants, which can be found about 400 kilometres from their original place of collection.

It’s always difficult for us to know whether these were the same people travelling to and from the coast over hundreds of kilometres—because they were nomadic people at the time, of course—or if they were different groups exchanging and trading objects. It's actually quite difficult to determine. We don't really know the size of the territory occupied by a single group at that time.

Chris - What were they turning them into?

Jean-Marc - Most of the tools they made out of whale bone were projectile points—spear points—part of their hunting equipment. Some of them are quite long and wide. We have fragments that are more than 35 centimetres long, and they're only fragments, so the complete object must have been at least 40 centimetres.

They were probably crafted into rather large projectiles, like lances or spear-type weapons, rather than arrows, for example. Most of them are found as fragments, with fractures linked to their use. So, they were used in hunting, broken during use, and discarded on the cave floor.

Chris - How do you know it's whale bone, though? Because there were other big animals around at the time that could also have provided large bones—you could have done all those things you mentioned with them. So why did they go for whales? And how do you know these are whales?

Jean-Marc - Land mammals have a marrow cavity inside the bone, and whales don’t. In whales, the marrow is distributed throughout the whole thickness of the bone in small pores. So, when you look at the bone in detail, it has a specific porous structure not found in land mammals.
That’s how we first identified them 15 years ago. But the precise species identification—whether it’s a blue whale, a sperm whale, or whatever—comes from a completely different technique. It's palaeoproteomics, specifically a method called ZooMS. We sample a tiny part of the object, and the collagen in the sample is analysed. Collagen differs from one species to another. We then compare the result to a reference library, which allows us to say, “Okay, this small worked fragment that we couldn't identify with the naked eye is made from a fin whale,” for example.

Chris - Can those proteins also be dated? Is that how you can be sure when the people were exploiting these whales?

Jean-Marc - Collagen is a wonderful molecule because it has many uses for analysis, and one of them is dating. It’s used in the classic radiocarbon dating method. What is rather new in our study is that we used a specific technique called the MICADAS microcarbon dating system. We prepare the sample in such a way that we can date very small amounts of material. That was necessary here, of course, because these objects are few in number, small, and of high heritage value—so you can't just cut one in half and send half to a dating lab.

Chris - And what date do these objects come from, then? And where were the people getting the whales from? Were they actually catching the whales? Or were these people seashore dwellers, and occasionally a carcass would roll in—and that’s a valuable commodity?

Jean-Marc - Most of the species we identified are very large whales—fin whales, sperm whales, blue whales, grey whales—which were not hunted until fairly recently. We can’t really imagine that they had the techniques and technology at that time to hunt those whales. And, by the way, there’s no evidence of seafaring or boats from that period, and no signs of settlements on islands either. So, the most likely hypothesis by far is that they were using natural strandings or drift whales that came ashore.