About 11,000 years ago, Stone Age hunters formed sharp weapons from human bones, a new study has found.
These hunter-gatherers lived in Doggerland, a Now-underwater area in the North Sea Which connects Europe with Britain. At the end of the last ice age, when the sea level was low, it was inhabited by herds of animals and humans. Although these people have long since passed away, items from their culture, including bone weapons, are often washed ashore in the Netherlands.
An analysis of 10 of these bone weapons revealed that eight have been carved Red deer (Service Elfus) Were formed from bones and antlers and two human bones. “We expect to find some deer, but humans? It wasn’t even in my wildest dreams that there would be humans among them,” said researcher Joannes Decker, a research student at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. .
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It is a mystery why these weapons, known as barbed points, were carved out of human bones. The research team can’t think of a practical reason – human bones (unlike deer fossils) were probably hard to come by and human bones aren’t an excellent material for making particularly sharp weapons – deer ants are better, Decker said.
Instead, “there were probably cultural rules about which species to use for thorny point production,” he said. “We think it was a conscious choice … [that had to do] With meanings and associations with people [deceased] People as symbols. “
Bone marrow
Dog Dog is about 1000 known bone weapons from Garland, named for the nearby Dogger Bank, a popular in a shallow area in the Middle Ages in Dutch fishing boats called Doggers. Some of these spines are small, about 2.5 inches (9 centimeters) long, but others are longer, the researchers said. The gravel point would have been thrown like a bhakri, started like an arrow from a bow, or pushed with a spear, Decker said. Whichever method shows the effect stains and cracks on their tips has a high velocity effect with the targets, Previous research Found.
These artefacts have been washed ashore in the Netherlands for years, but in the last few decades the Dutch have started dredging along the coast, Decker added.
Radiocarbon dating has revealed that these bone weapons were discovered by Decker and his companions during the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age, 11,000 to 8,000 years ago. By unique analysis Collagen Protein in each bone, the team determined the species for each weapon. Finally, by studying variations, or isotopes Carbon And Nitrogen In each bone, the team learned that, surprisingly, deer have a vegetarian diet, while two humans eat animals that live on land and in fresh water.
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Deck noted that his study was small, and that only a large analysis could reveal how many common weapons of human bones were in the Mesolithic Dogerland. It is also not clear what body bones they come from, but one of the bones of the long legs or arms will work best given the size of the arms.
One thing is clear: these bones were carved immediately after a person’s death, because fresh human bones are much easier to carve than dry, brittle ones, Decker said.
However, “the use of human bones for bone tools is so rare,” Decker said, not without precedent. New Guinea warriorsDaggers made of human thigh bones are used, for example, but only from very important ones.
The new study is published in the February 2021 issue Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
Published on Original Living Science.
