In the distant past, Europe was a very different place – Britain was once tied to the European continent.
It wasn’t until millennia later, when that connection had long been broken, that modern humans began to rediscover ancient artifacts from Stone Age peoples who once lived in lands now hidden beneath the waves.
One of these lost empires – called Doggerland – lay between Great Britain and the Netherlands, and its existence is revealed today in myriad cultural objects that wash up along the shores of Dutch beaches.
These artifacts were long thought to be numerous barbed points carved out of bone as a form of weapon used by Mesolithic hunger collectors living in Doggerland or its surrounding area as early as 11,000 years ago.
“We’re pretty sure they are projectile points,” said archaeologist Joannes Dekker of Leiden University New scientist, noting that the barbed points, which probably adorned arrows or perhaps spears, indicate signs of active use as weapons or tools, not as ceremonial objects.
“They have been re-sharpened. They show signs of wear.”
But that is not everything. In a new study led by Dekker, researchers analyzed 10 of the barbed points collected on the Dutch North Sea coast, using mass spectrometry and a technique called collagen peptide mass fingerprinting (also known as ZooMS).
While it was never known what kind of bone was used for the weapons, the researchers were nevertheless surprised when the results came in, showing that human bone was used for two of the barbed points, with the rest largely from the bones of the antiquity was cut. red deer (Cervus elaphus).
The researchers argue that the prominent use of red deer bones simply reflects the species’ availability to the ancient hunter-gatherers.
Other species, including aurochs (Bos primigenius), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) and wild boar (sus), should also have been easy to find, and their bones or antlers would have been equally appropriate from a biomechanical perspective, if not more.
“This was not an economic decision,” explains Dekker Smithsonian Magazine. “There must have been some other reason, some cultural reason, why it was important to use these strains.”
This is especially true for human bones, which is even more puzzling.
“Ethnographic data on hunter-gatherers, employing an immediate foraging style, shows that the amount of exploited animal resources is several orders of magnitude higher than the biomass of the hunter-gatherer themselves,” the authors write in their paper.
“In other words, human bones usually make up only a miniscule fraction of the total amount of bones available to hunter-gatherers … Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that opportunistic selection for human bone is highly unlikely.”
What, then, can explain the deliberate use of human bones by the ancient hunters of Doggerland?
There is no way we can be sure, but the researchers hypothesize that the use of red deer bones could reflect some form of culture-specific meaning or symbolism attributed to the species.
Likewise, the human bone points could have served ritualistic purposes, as they represent a type of mortuary practice – one in which “human remains are turned into weapons.”
The Doggerland tide may have risen, but the hunt lasts forever in the afterlife.
The findings are reported in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.