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Oldest needles found
The Denisova Cave needle is not the oldest — a point from Sibudu Cave, South Africa, pushes the record back to roughly 61,000 years ago, predating the Denisovans' tool by a full 11,000 years. The global distribution of needle-making — Siberia, South Africa, Slovenia, China, Alaska — suggests independent parallel invention, not a single cultural origin. This flatly challenges the standard Out-of-Africa diffusion narrative that dominates paleoanthropology.
Evidence
- The Sibudu Cave specimen from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, dated to c.
- The Denisova Cave needle, attributed to Denisovans rather than anatomically modern humans and dated to around 50,000 BP, is the most intact eyed needle of Palaeolithic age.
- Further complicating the picture, a bone needle from Potok Cave (Potočka zijalka) in Slovenia dates to the Aurignacian, 47,000–41,000 BP.
- The most recent geographic addition, per Science Report (October 2026), is Shégˊ Xdaltthˊíˊ in interior Alaska, where eight bone needle fragments — four retaining a partial eye — represent the oldest known needles in the Western Hemisphere, extending sewing technology into late Pleistocene Beringia.
- 61,000 BP, is the strongest candidate for the world's oldest needle point.