17 hours agoShareSaveHelen BriggsBBC environment correspondent•@hbriggsShareSaveTalamo et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0Boomerangs are generally associated with Aboriginal culture in Australia.However, rare finds in the historical record outside Australia suggest they were used across different continents.The oldest known boomerang from Australia dates to about 10,500 years ago, made from wood. But the oldest images of boomerangs in Australia are rock art paintings 20,000 years old, according to National Museum Australia. A wooden boomerang dating back 7,000 years has been found in Jutland, a peninsula between Denmark and Germany, while fragments of a 2,000-year-old oak boomerang – which does come back – has been found in The Netherlands.The research by a team of scientists from Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland and the UK is published in the journal PLOS One.
