The ancient Mammut-Tuta Bumerang is twice as older than we thought

The oldest world -renowned boomerang can be 22,000 years older than he thought earlier, which suggests that it was made in a period when early people showed an increase in art.

In 1985, archaeologists discovered a 72-centers of long ivory boomerang buried under six layers of sediment in Obłazow cave in Poland. The later sifting of sediments discovered Homo sapiens The bones of the thumb nearby, as well as the tool for horns, bone grains and pendants made of foxes. In the 1990s, a radiocarbon outing suggested that the thumb was 31,000 years old – but it is surprising that Boomerang is dated to only 18,000 years, several millennia younger than artifacts in the higher layers.

Sahra Talamo At the University of Bologna, Italy, he suspected contamination. “Even the amount of modern carbon traces – from adhesive or preservation products – can reject the radiocarbon date for tens of thousands of years,” she says. Analyzes of carbon nitrogen ratio have shown signs of changed collagen, indicating that preserved samples are not high enough quality for reliable radiocarbonate.

Repeating the contaminated boomerang would be in vain and unnecessarily damaging the precious artifact, Talamo says. Instead, she and her colleagues were 13 nearby animal bones, re -annexed the bone of the human thumb and used statistical modeling to reconstruct the temporal strip. Their results showed that the entire layer of sediment – and therefore boomerang and thumb – dates to 39,000 and 42,000 years ago.

“In a way, this is an advertisement to museums that when you find something extraordinary, you should not cover it with glue or other renovation materials before you complete all your analyzes,” she says.

Her new age means that boomerang ivory preceded the second oldest famous boomerangima-which made indigenous Australians from 30,000 years of wood. Unlike simpler throwing sticks, like a Wooden implementation of 300,000 years Found in Schöningen in Germany, the boomerangs are curved and aerodynamically shaped, even if they do not always return to the launch, Talamo says.

Indeed, although the ancient boomerang could most likely fly, its size and design probably unlikely to return to the sender. Instead, she may have served a symbolic or festive purpose, Talamo says, based on his or her decorative engraves, a reddish pigment and a smooth Polish Polish – in combination with his placement next to the human bone of the thumb in a circle of imported stones.

The finding offers insight into cognitive abilities and the art of early people during the bang of artistic expression that occurred during the early aurignation period, starting about 40,000 years ago. During this time, symbolic artifacts like ivory figure mammothRock art and aesthetically made tools first appeared in Europe, Talamo says.