This piece of bone from 39,600 years ago has multiple puncture marks on it that seem to have been made by puncturing leather
F. d'Errico and L. Doyon
An analysis of a 39,600-year-old bone containing strange indentations claims it was used as a punch board for making holes in leather, revealing how Homo sapiens in Europe made clothes to help them survive cold climates at that time.
Luc Doyon at the University of Bordeaux, France, who led the study, said, “We do not have much information about clothes because they’re perishable. They are an early technology we’re in the dark about.”
The bone, from the hip of a large mammal such as a horse or bison, was discovered at a site called Terrasses de la Riera dels Canyars near Barcelona, Spain. It has 28 puncture marks on its flat surface, including a linear sequence of 10 holes about 5 millimeters apart from each other, as well as other holes in more random positions.
This pattern was “highly intriguing” because it didn’t appear to be a decoration or to represent a counting tally. Microscopic analysis revealed that the line of 10 indents was made by one tool and the other dots were made at different times by five different tools. The researchers used an approach called experimental archaeology and found that the only way to recreate the indents on the Canyars bone was to knock a chisel-like stone tool called a burin through a thick hide, a technique called indirect percussion.
The most likely explanation for the indents is that they were made during the manufacture or repair of leather items. “It’s a very significant discovery,” said Ian Gilligan at the University of Sydney, Australia. “We have no direct evidence for clothes in the Pleistocene, so finding any indirect evidence is valuable. The oldest surviving fragments of cloth in the world date from around 10,000 years ago.”
This discovery helps solve a mystery about the emergence of fitted clothing. Homo sapiens reached Europe around 42,000 years ago, yet eyed needles haven’t been found in this region from earlier than around 26,000 years ago and these aren’t strong enough to repeatedly puncture thick leather – raising the question of how these ancient people managed to make garments to fit them.
“The knowledge about making fitting clothing without bone needles is something we didn’t have access to before,” said Doyon.
“The location and date are interesting: southern Europe nearly 40,000 years ago,” said Gilligan. “That’s quite soon after the arrival of Homo sapiens, during some rapid cold swings in the climate. It’s when and where we’d expect our ancestors to need good clothes for protection.”
Doyon and his colleagues argue that this punch board marks a crucial cultural adaptation to climate change that helped modern humans expand to new regions.
The punch board was one of six artefacts found at the Canyars site, they say, and could have been part of a repair kit.
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