Ancient Boomerang Mystery Deepens: New Study Uncovers Even Older Origins Than Imagined
A new analysis of the boomerang, made with the cave’s other objects in mind, has suggested that the world’s oldest boomerang was made by ancient humans between 39,000 and 42,000 years ago.
Calculating And Recalculating The Age Of The World’s Oldest Boomerang
Jerzy Opioła/Wikimedia CommonsObłazowa Cave in Poland, where the boomerang was found in the 1980s.
The revelation about the boomerang’s age was made by researchers in the journal PLOS One. They set out to investigate an enduring mystery about the boomerang, which was found in Obłazowa Cave in the 1980s. Archaeologists also unearthed other objects at the site, including antler tools, pendants made from fox teeth, animal bones, a bone bead, and a human thumb bone.
But while radiocarbon dating in the 1990s suggested that the thumb bone was 31,000 years old, the boomerang appeared to be much younger. To the surprise of the researchers, radiocarbon dating found that the boomerang was supposedly just 18,000 years old. This seemed off to some experts, and raised the possibility that the sample had been contaminated.
“This finding raises concerns about potential contamination from modern adhesives or conservation materials that may have been applied during restoration efforts after the fragments were reassembled long after their initial discovery,” researchers wrote in the new study. “Such contamination, along with other factors, casts doubt on the reliability of this date.”
To reevaluate the age of the boomerang, the researchers used an innovative method. Because the sample itself was possibly contaminated, they used statistical modeling, based on newer, more reliable radiocarbon dating of the human thumb bone and animal bones from the cave, to determine the boomerang’s age. Using this method, they found, with a 95.4 percent probability, that the boomerang was between 39,000 and 42,000 years old.
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