But none of these fishhooks were found in human burials, the researchers said. The oldest fishhooks in the world (made from the shells of sea snails) were found in Sakitari Cave on Okinawa Island between 22,380 and 22,770 years old. ![]() Other fishhook discoveries include 23,000-year-old and 20,000-year-old fishhooks from Okinawa Island, in Japan, and 23,000-, 16,000- and 11,000-year-old shell fishhooks from East Timor, a Pacific island nation south of Indonesia. A fish hook or similar device was made by the man many thousands of years ago. ![]() "We argue that the same sort of artifact was developed independently because it was the most fitting form to suit the ecology, rather than through cultural diffusion," O'Connor said in the statement. Given that Alor is a remote island and that its rotating fishhooks were produced much earlier than the ones in Oman, it's likely that the different cultures developed this "rotating technology" separately, instead of picking it up from each other, she said. There are also 6,000-year-old rotating fishhooks made of pearl shell ( Pinctada radiate) in Oman. Until this discovery, the oldest funerary fishhooks were a collection of 9,000-year-old hooks found in Siberia's Ershi cemetery. "We believe this early burial shows that this woman was of high status, as burials with grave goods as exceedingly rare in Southeast Asia," O'Connor said. (The Pleistocene epoch lasted from 2.6 million to about 11,700 years ago.) The discovery is the oldest known burial with grave goods on an island in Southeast Asia and one of the only Pleistocene burials with grave goods anywhere in Southeast Asia, O'Connor said. Of course, the findings are a treasure to archaeologists. It's fairly common for villagers to think archaeologists are prospecting for more conventional treasures, rather than old bones and stone artifacts, she noted. "We did not have time to open a bigger area in that field season, but decided we should excavate the skull and fish hooks because there was a risk that some villagers, who believed we were digging for gold or that there must be gold or gems in the site, might come and dig it up after we left," O'Connor told Live Science. (Image credit: Photograph by SofĂa Samper Carro, as featured in Antiquity) A fishhook and pierced bivalve shell were found near her jaw. ![]() The skull, likely that of an adult woman, was discovered in the rock shelter.
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