Sticky orange coating on a 6,000-year-old Yukon dart came from a beaver's anal sac
A 6,000-year-old feathered dart recently discovered in the Canadian Yukon was smeared with castoreum, a sticky, orange secretion produced in the anal sacs of beavers.
This is the first time that castoreum has been chemically identified in the archaeological record, and the dart is the earliest evidence of the substance's use on an ancient weapon, scientists recently reported. The researchers aren't sure why the anal secretion was applied to the dart, though it could have been as a way to preserve it, decorate it or even reinforce it, they said.
The dart, which measured about 6.6 feet (2 meters) long, is known as an atlatl, a segmented throwing weapon made of three sections of birchwood bound together with animal sinews and fletched with feathers. Reddish-orange residue coated the dart in two places near the weapon's joints, researchers wrote in the June 2021 issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. Read more.
