Bone fragment reveals humans wore leather clothes 39,000 years ago
A study of an ancient bone from Spain with a strange pattern of notches hints that it was used by early Homo sapiens in Europe as a punch board for making holes in leather
By Alison George
12 April 2023
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.
“We do not have much information about clothes because they’re perishable,” says Luc Doyon at the University of Bordeaux, France, who led the study. “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 millimetres apart from each other, as well as other holes in more random positions.
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The archaeologists recreating the secrets of prehistoric technology
This pattern was “highly intriguing”, says Doyon, because it didn’t appear to be a decoration or to represent a counting tally – the usual explanations for deliberate patterns of lines or dots on prehistoric objects. 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. “Why do we have different types of arrangements on the same bone?” says Doyon.
The researchers used an approach called experimental archaeology, in which you try out different ancient tools to see how marks were made. “We’re attempting to replicate the gestures that were used by prehistoric people to produce a specific modification on the bone,” says Doyon.
