World's Oldest Boomerang Sounds Kind Of Lame, I'm Not Gonna Lie

What I'm about to say will make me sound like a complete and utter rube, but it's true: I have always found boomerangs mind-boggling.

The fact that some ancient Aboriginal Australian in the Outback was hanging around one day with his buddies caving in kangaroo skulls or whatever, and then was like, "Yo, I've been working on this throwing stick, but you don't have to chase it because it comes back to you," is nuts to me. To understand aerodynamics like that, back when building fire was still somewhat new technology, is incredible.

Or at least that's what pop culture and the walls of most Outback Steakhouses led me to believe, but according to the BBC, the oldest boomerang actually comes from Poland, and scientists now believe it's much older than previous thought… the only problem is it doesn't come back if you throw it.

A Polish boomerang that doesn't come back, huh? I let you write those jokes…

Back in 1985, the boomerang — which archaeologists say was crafted out of a mammoth tusk, which is pretty badass — was discovered and was initially thought to be 30,000 years old. That's much older than the oldest known Australian boomerang, which is just 10,500 (I learned a lot about boomerangs this afternoon).

But now, researchers believe the Polish mammoth boomerang is somewhere between 39,000 and 42,000 years old.

But none of this changes the fact that if you threw it, it wouldn't come back to you, which in my mind doesn't make it a boomerang. It makes it a mammoth tusk that some guy was throwing (and then chasing) around tens of thousands of years ago.

I don't find that as impressive at all. Anyone can take a mammoth tusk and turn it into a throwing stick. 

We need to put some respect on the name of the Aboriginal Australian genius who solved the mystery of boomerangs without a wind tunnel or CAD software.