13,300 year old spear made of woolly rhinoceros horn found on Arctic island

The spear tip. Picture: The Siberian Times 

Studies on the intriguing rhino spear are still ongoing but this remarkable find seen as having considerable archeological significance.

The spear tip, almost 90cm in length and seemingly still sharp enough to kill, was found on the island of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky, off the northern coast of Siberia, as researchers hunted for remains of woolly mammoths.

If all the information is confirmed, it will be the northernmost point where a human implement was found, three degrees latitude further north than we had known before.

Previously ancient tools were found at a site on the Yana River, on the Siberian mainland, some 380 km to the south.

Bolshoy Lyakhovsky island on the map. Picture: Russian Geographical Society

This find helps the understanding of how far north people penetrated in the Paleolithic Era.

The weapon was dated as being 13,300 years old after being sent for analysis to Groningen University in the Netherlands. Rhinos in Siberia died out around 12,000 years ago.

The spear is also in one-piece, so it could be made only from the horn of a big, mature rhino. Woolly rhinos were rather dangerous animals, and hunting them could be regarded as a huge trophy.

Previously, woolly rhinoceros horn has been seen as a component in the construction of ancient spears in Siberia, for example in the coupling of a stone tip to the shaft.

The woolly rhino's horn is rather hard, but flexible at the same time. It consists of keratin - a substance that makes up our hair and nails. Deer horn or cow horn, by contrast, consist of bone substance.

Replica of a woolly rhino created by Remie Bakke

One possibility that needs scientific evidence is that it was used to kill mammoths which, like the woolly rhinos, are long extinct. The spear suggests these early Siberians were accomplished hunters.

At the Yana River site, dating back approximately 30,000 years, were found such artifacts as axes, stone scrapers, worked quartz crystals, tools made of wolf bone, and spear foreshafts made of mammoth tusk and rhinoceros horn.