In the old days, Europe was a very different place – once, Britain was still connected to the European continent.
It was only thousands of years later, when that connection was severed long ago, that modern people began to rediscover ancient artefacts from Stone Age people who once lived on land. Which was now hidden beneath the waves.
One of these lost kingdoms – known as Doggerland – lay between Britain and the Netherlands, and its existence today is manifested in countless cultural objects that wash up on the shores of Dutch beaches.
Among these items have long been thought to be a type of weapon carved in a number of brutal places carved from bone used by hungry Mesolithic collectors living in Doggerland or the Middle East. it was around as far back as 11,000 years ago.
“We’re pretty sure they’re project points,” said archaeologist Joannes Dekker from Leiden University in the Netherlands New scientist, indicating that the brutal points, which are likely decorated arrows or perhaps spears, show signs of active use as weapons or tools, not as ritual objects.
“They’ve been reset. They’re showing consumer spending.”
But that’s not it. In a new study led by Dekker, researchers analyzed 10 of the rough points collected from the Dutch North Sea coast, using mass spectrametry and a method called fingerprinting. large collagen peptide (aka ZooMS).
Although it is never known what type of bone was used for the weapons, the researchers were still surprised when the results came in, showing that human bone was used for two of the rough points, with the rest carved from ancient red deer bones (Cervus elaphus).
The researchers argue that apparent use of red deer bones may just reflect the availability of the ancient hunter-gatherers.
However, other species include aurochs (Bos primigenius), earba (Capreolus capreolus) and wild boar (Sus scrofa), should have been easy to find as well, and their bones or bones would have been equally fit from a biomechanical point of view, if not more so.
“This was not an economic decision,” Dekker explained to him Iris Smithsonian. “There must have been another reason, a cultural reason, why it was important to use these species.”
That’s especially true for human bones, which are even more interesting.
“Ethnological data on hunter-gatherers, who use an immediate return hunting style, show that the amount of animal resources used is several orders of magnitude higher than the biology of hunter-gatherers. itself, “the authors write in their paper.
In other words, human bones usually make up only a small fraction of the total number of bones found by hunter-gatherers … So it is reasonable to assume that it is very likely that be a favorable choice for human bone. “
What then can explain the deliberate use of human bones by ancient Doggerland hunters?
There is no way we can be absolutely sure, but the researchers acknowledge that the use of red deer bones may have revealed some sort of special meaning or culture attributed to the gender.
Similarly, the points of human bone may have served ritualistic purposes, representing a form of lethal practice – one in which “human remains are transformed into weapons”.
The Doggerland tide may be rising, but the hunt will last forever in the next life.
The results are reported in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.