Boomerangs, gracefully curved artifacts used for hunting, are quintessentially Australian. Or so we thought.
More than 40,000 years ago, when mammoths still roamed the frigid plains of Ice Age Europe, a skilled craftsperson carved a sleek, curved weapon from the ivory of one of those very animals. It was long, polished, and subtly asymmetrical. In 1985, archaeologists pulled it from the sediments of Obłazowa Cave, near the Carpathian Mountains.
Scientists have now reanalyzed the boomerang and dated it to around 40,000 years ago, making it the oldest known boomerang in the world.
In 1985, a team of archaeologists working in Poland found a trove of artifacts. Among them was a 72-cm-long boomerang. It was a bit surprising, but not shocking. Although traditionally thought of as Australian, (non-returning) boomerangs have also been used in ancient Europe, Egypt, and even North America.
When the archaeologists dated the boomerang in Poland, it was dated to 30,000 years ago. In the same area, a human thumb bone was also found and dated to 31,000 years old. But some suspected this could be an unreliable result, influenced by contamination from other materials.
Now, more reliable radiocarbon dating puts the age between 39,000 and 42,000 years old. This makes it the oldest boomerang in the world.
Hunting like the ancients
The artifact has all the features that show up in boomerangs used by Australian Aboriginals. It has an arched shape and a flat cross-section. Its size suggests it would have been used as a weapon to hunt and kill. However, because of its exquisite craftsmanship, researchers also suspect it could have been used in some rituals.
The original paper describing the boomerang, published in 1987 in Nature suggested links to the Pavlov culture, which roamed central Europe around 29,000–25,000 years ago. But this new dating places it 10,000 years before the Pavlovian culture. This radically shifts the cultural attribution and suggests that complex projectile technology, like aerodynamic boomerangs, was being developed much earlier in Europe than previously thought.
It also hints that humans in Europe may have shared cultural traits — such as throwing weapons — with distant populations elsewhere in the world. Whether this represents convergence or a common origin, we don’t know yet.
This tool was crafted during a pivotal time in human prehistory: the Upper Paleolithic, a period spanning roughly from 50,000 to 12,000 years ago. Europe was a dramatically colder and harsher place then. It was also a time when both Neanderthals and humans were around.
Obłazowa Cave preserves traces of both groups. Layers lower down contain Neanderthal tools. But above them lie artifacts linked to modern humans: pendants carved from fox teeth, ocher-stained blades, and the boomerang. This boomerang was likely a result of Homo sapiens innovation, not Neanderthal.
The history of boomerangs
When most people hear the word boomerang, they picture a wooden object spinning gracefully back to its thrower — a symbol of Australian Aboriginal culture. And for good reason. Boomerangs have long been associated with Indigenous Australians, who have used them for thousands of years.
But not all boomerangs are returning. Many are used as hunting weapons to strike and kill, not return. They were also used as tools for digging or as ceremonial objects. But the history of boomerangs is far more widespread and complex.
In Australia, wooden boomerangs dating back 10,500 years have been found. That’s also where boomerangs were the most common. Roughly 60% of Aboriginal peoples used both returning boomerangs and non-returning hunting sticks. A further 10% had only non-returning hunting sticks, and the remaining 30% used neither. Indigenous Australian rock art that is potentially 50,000 years old also depicts boomerangs. So, they may be much older, but we don’t have the hard evidence for that (and wood is also unlikely to preserve, compared to ivory).
But throwing sticks are not uniquely Australian. In Europe, a 7,000-year-old boomerang was discovered in Denmark’s Jutland peninsula. In The Netherlands, a 2,000-year-old oak boomerang with returning capabilities has also been recovered. There is evidence of the use of non-returning weapons similar to boomerangs by the ancient Egyptians, by the Native Americans of California and Arizona, and inhabitants of South India.
Most remarkably, a 300,000-year-old throwing stick — not technically a boomerang, but functionally similar — was found in Schöningen, Germany. It was likely used by Homo heidelbergensis or early Neanderthals, making it one of the oldest projectile weapons known.
Ancient ingenuity
Despite this rich history, no boomerang found to date rivals the age, material, and preservation of the one in Obłazowa Cave.
This artifact suggests an unexpected level of planning and material knowledge. It also hints that humans in Europe may have shared cultural traits with distant populations elsewhere in the world. It’s a humbling reminder that ingenuity didn’t begin with agriculture or metallurgy. It began tens of thousands of years earlier, with people who understood how to shape ivory into flight.
Journal Reference: Sahra Talamo et al, Boomerang and bones: Refining the chronology of the Early Upper Paleolithic at Obłazowa Cave, Poland, PLOS One (2025). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0324911
