09 Sep Archaeologists Land World’s Oldest Fish Hook
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The international weekly journal of science Nature has reported that Archaeologists have unearthed the world’s oldest fish hooks at a site in East Timor, near Indonesia.
The fish hooks are made from sea shells and were discovered by Sue O’Connor, an archaeologist at the Australian National University in Canberra, and her colleagues. One of the fish hooks was dated back to approximately 11,000 years old while the other has been dated back to between 23,000 and 16,000 years old.
These shell fish hooks are the earliest known example of fish hook manufacture by 5,500 years. Before that archaeologist had found examples of fish hooks in South East Asia associated with the early stages of agriculture.
The discoveries, from a limestone cave site known as the Jerimalai shelter on the north of the island, are published today in Science and include over 38,000 fish bones dating back as early as 42,000 years ago. Most of these fish bones were from Tuna, but many of them showed people were eating sharks and even rays.
This is substantial evidence that humans were fishing from the open ocean as early as 42,000 years ago which is staggering to think about seeing as they didn’t even have fishfinders let alone FishHunter to tell them what was out there.
Here is to you early Hominid and your advanced maritime skills. If you want to read the original article in whole, you can find it here.