Worlds Oldest Fish Hooks Found in East Timor

Australian archaeologists have found what they think is the world’s oldest fishing hooks at a site at Jerimalai, near the eastern tip of East Timor.

The hooks are up to 23,000 years old!
In the journal Science, they said their research shows that people who crossed the open oceans to colonise Australia were also effective deep sea anglers. The remains they found of pelagic fish such as Tuna were 42,000 years old, pushing back the date for the earliest example of deep sea fishing by about 30,000 years. The oldest hooks they discovered were shown to be somewhere between 23,000 and 16,000 years old.

“This is the earliest definite evidence for fishing hook manufacture in the world” the scientists stated.

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