Ice Age humans made needles from animal bones, archaeologists find

To stay warm during the last ice age, early humans needed protective clothing. What these garments looked like and how they were put together remains an archaeological mystery. Now a Wyoming team has discovered that Paleolithic North Americans likely made needles from the bones of foxes, hares, rabbits, bobcats, mountain lions, lynx and even the American cheetah, now disappeared. Archaeologists also recently discovered the oldest known bead in the Americas at this site, made from the bone of a hare. The bone needles are described in a study published November 27 in the journal PLOS ONE.

The bone needles were discovered at an archaeological site in Wyoming that sheds light on some of the earliest inhabitants of North America called La Prele. Previously, archaeologists discovered evidence that humans killed or scavenged a Colombian mammoth around 13,000 years ago. La Prele was occupied during the final years of the last ice age, when it was probably about nine to 11 degrees cooler in Wyoming.

“Our team on this study largely adheres to the idea that the first Americans arrived south of the North American continental ice sheets approximately 13,000 years ago and are associated with the Clovis cultural complex,” Spencer Pelton, co -study author and Wyoming State. Archaeologist, tells Popular science. “Given its age, the occupants of La Prele could have been the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the first Americans. »

According to Pelton, bone needles are common during this period in the North American archaeological record because sewing intricate clothing to withstand freezing temperatures was a necessity in response to climate change brought on by the last ice age. Early humans in northern latitudes likely created tailored clothing with tight seams that provided a better barrier against the elements. There is little direct evidence for the existence of such clothing, but bone needles and fur-bearing animal bones used to make skins provide indirect evidence of these early confections.

“The bone needles are extremely small, but when they appear on screen, they’re pretty unmistakable once you see them,” Pelton says.

To identify the bone needles and balls, the team in this study used zooarchaeology mass spectrometry (ZooMS), micro-CT, and extracted collagen from the 32 bone needle fragments. They compared peptides from bone needles – short chains of amino acids – with peptides from animals known to have lived in the area during the early Paleondian period in North America (about 13,500 and 12,000 years).

(Related: Ice Age humans may have used pike to hunt mammoths.)

They found that the bones of several animals were likely used to make these needles: red foxes, bobcats, mountain lions, bobcats, American cheetahs, hares and rabbits were used to make needles at the LaPrele site. These animals surprised the team, because early Paleoindian sites in the Great Plains are typically dominated by the bones of large animals like bison and mammoths. Remains of wildlife, including red foxes, rabbits and cats, indicate that humans likely used trap lines to catch smaller animals.

“(It) really changed our perception of early Paleoindians as exclusive big-game hunters,” Pelton says.

Although there are currently no examples of preserved Paleolithic clothing, the team believes that these bone needles provide some of the best evidence to date of what clothing looked like at this time and how similar they are to clothing worn by indigenous peoples living today.

“These were intricate garments trimmed with red fox, hare and cat furs, some of which had feet still attached, as is common among modern trappers,” says Pelton. “They were likely comparable to similar clothing worn by Inuit, able to withstand the cold and windy conditions of Wyoming’s last ice age.”