Many people think boomerangs come from Australia. But a very old boomerang was found in a cave in southern Poland. It is 72 centimeters long, and it is made from a mammoth tusk.

Scientists checked the age of animal bones from the same layer of the cave. The boomerang is about 40,000 years old. That is about 30,000 years older than the oldest wooden boomerang from Australia. Early humans in Europe made it.

Boomerangs are usually linked with Aboriginal Australians, but one of the oldest known boomerangs comes from Europe. In the 1980s, archaeologists digging in Obłazowa Cave in southern Poland found a curved object, 72 centimeters long, carved from a mammoth tusk. Earlier attempts to date it were unreliable because modern materials used to preserve it may have contaminated the samples.

In a study published in 2025, researchers dated 13 animal bones and a human thumb bone from the same layer. Their results suggest the boomerang is about 40,000 years old, from a time when modern humans had only recently arrived in Europe. By comparison, the oldest wooden boomerangs found in Australia are about 10,000 years old.

Most people associate the boomerang with Aboriginal Australia. But one of the oldest known examples was discovered thousands of kilometers away, in Obłazowa Cave in the Carpathian foothills of southern Poland. Excavated in the 1980s, the 72-centimeter curved piece of mammoth ivory shows polishing, fine incisions and traces of red pigment, and experiments indicate it could fly as a non-returning boomerang.

Because previous radiocarbon dates were probably distorted by modern conservation materials, a team led by Sahra Talamo re-dated 13 animal bones and a human thumb bone from the same layer, combining the animal-bone dates in a Bayesian model. They placed the boomerang between roughly 42,000 and 39,000 years ago, when early modern humans were spreading into Central Europe. The analysis also revealed a twist: a bone long identified as a human little finger actually belonged to a young deer. That said, the date is not certain. The boomerang itself was not dated directly this time, and the thumb bone's poorly preserved collagen means its age should be regarded as a minimum estimate.