The whalebone was found in excavations in the Bay of Biscay off the French and Spanish coast 100 years ago. Researchers suspected that they were dealing with very old objects, but since they were such small fragments, it was difficult to determine how old they were.
However, with the help of zooarchaeology (ZooMS) through mass spectrometry, among other things, researchers have succeeded in analyzing the whalebone tools. The results, which are published in communications, point to the fact that they were used almost 20,000 years ago.
The bones come from blue whales, sperm whales, and other whale species and were formed into narrow, pointed tools for hunting. Pétillon believes that the finds of whale tools are an important contribution to the understanding of the importance of coastal environments for humans far back in time.
