Four bone tools discovered in Western Australia have changed how archaeologists think of ancient northern Australian indigenous societies after the tools were reevaluated to be between 35,000 and 47,000 years old—making them among the oldest of their kind in Australia. The findings published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology in February come after a similar discovery in 2016 of a roughly 46,000-year-old nose piercing made from kangaroo bone. Prior to this, bone tools were believed by some to only have existed as early as 20,000 years ago. Dr Michelle Langley, from Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution and Forensics & Archaeology, said it was once believed that bone tools did not play an important role in the ancient indigenous society’s in northern Australia. However, they had been used in the cooler parts of Australia and Tasmania, where communities used the skins for protection against the cold. “We once thought that bone …