Octopus Lure Dated 3,500 Years Ago Found As World’s Oldest Known Artifacts of Its Kind

Archeological research has specified that cowrie-shell artifacts discovered throughout the Mariana Islands were lures used to hunt octopuses and that the devices, akin versions of what has been discovered on islands across the Pacific, are the oldest known artifacts of their type in the world.

The study, a EurekAlert! report specified, used carbon dating of archeological layers to validate that lures discovered on the Northern Mariana Islands of Tinian and Saipan was dated around 1500 BC or 3,500 years back.

According to archeologist Michael Carson from the Micronesian Area Research Center at the University of Guam, the discovery is back to when people first lived in the Mariana Islands.

Therefore, he added, they think these could be the oldest octopus lures in the Pacific region and, in fact, the world's oldest.

Oldest Lures Unearthed

The new study is published in the peer-reviewed academic journal World Archeology. Carson, who holds a doctorate in anthropology, is the study's lead author, assisted by the Australia-based Australian National University's Hsiao-Chun Hung.

The fishing devices were designed with cowrie shells, a kind of sea snail, and octopuses' favorite food linked by a fiber cord to a stone sinker and a hook.

They have been discovered in seven areas in the Mariana Islands. The oldest lures were unearthed in 2011 from Sanhalom close to the House of Taga in Tinian and in 2016 from Unai Bapot in Sapan.

Other areas include Saipan's Achugao, Tinian's Una Ckulu, Maniglao Golf Course's Mochom, Tarague Beach, and Ritidian Beach Cave in Guam.

Identified Artifacts with Unidentified Purpose

Carson explained that the artifacts had been identified. They knew about them, he added and said, it only took a long time considering the probabilities, the different hypotheses of what they could be.

The conventional notion, a long time ago from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, was that these need to be for scraping breadfruit or other pants, perhaps, like taro. However, they don't look like that.

The shells did not comprise the serrated edge of other identified food-scraping mechanisms. Their grooves and holes where the fiber cord would have been connected and the stone sinker components appeared closer to octopus lures discovered in Tonga roughly 3,000 years back, or 1100 BC.

The archeologist explained that they're confident that they are the pieces of octopus lures, and they are optimistic, too, that the discoveries date back to 1500 BC.

Ancient CHamorus

'The question now is, if the ancient CHamorus invent this adaptation to their environment when they first lived in the islands, said Carson, a similar ScienceDaily report.

He added that's a possibility that the other being that they brought the tradition with them from being their homeland before. Nonetheless, no artifacts of this type have yet been found in the potential homelands of the first-ever Marianas settlers.

Suppose the CHamorus indeed invented the first octopus lures. In that case, it offers a new understanding of their ingenuity and ability to solve problems by having to develop novel and specialized ways to live in a new environment and take advantage of an existing source of food.

The next question now, said Carson, is whether there are similar objects anywhere else from an older period.

Purely from the viewpoint of archeology, knowing the oldest of anything is always vital because then, one can track how things are changing through time.

A report about the recently discovered octopus lures is shown on NewsRme's YouTube video below:

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