October 24, 2025
2 min learn
Historic Vulture Nests Reveal 600 Years of Human Historical past—Together with 25 Sneakers
Cliff-rappelling scientists uncovered a crossbow bolt, a part of a slingshot and 25 sneakers in historic vulture nesting websites
A shoe, greater than 670 years previous, was one in all 25 discovered within the prime layers of 12 vulture nesting websites. It’s a design that was sometimes worn for just a few days earlier than being repaired or changed.
It seems the bearded vulture—additionally referred to as the quebrantahuesos, or bonebreaker—isn’t only a carrion scavenger. It’s additionally a eager collector of human ephemera. This behavior has given researchers in southern Spain a singular boon: “time capsules” of human exercise that stretch again greater than 600 years within the vultures’ distant cliffside nesting caves. The raptors typically reuse websites for generations.
Sifting via centuries’ value of eggshells, sticks and damaged bones, scientists have discovered a wealth of remarkably preserved historic artifacts—amongst them a crossbow bolt, a part of a slingshot and a chunk of leather-based with pink decorations that archaeologists say might be a “very peculiar masks.” The vultures appear to be significantly keen on footwear; to this point in excavating the higher layers of 12 nesting websites, the researchers have discovered 25 sneakers made out of woven esparto grass.
A sheep leather-based fragment that archaeologists say may be a “very peculiar masks” was present in an historic vulture nesting website. It’s greater than 625 years previous.
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With low humidity and safety from the weather, these cliffside caves create the proper setting for preserving traces of human historical past and previous environmental circumstances. “These are probably the most inaccessible locations you’ll be able to think about,” says Sergio Couto, a biologist on the College of Granada and co-author of a paper on the discoveries printed just lately in Ecology. “It’s unattainable to enter when you can not fly.” (Or, within the researchers’ case, rappel down from the cliffs.)
Two cliffside bearded vulture nesting websites.
These finds are just the start, says examine co-author Ana Marín-Arroyo, a prehistory professor on the College of Cantabria. “If the higher layers are from the thirteenth century, the decrease layers are going to be older. How previous?”
Maybe fairly previous certainly. Bearded vultures have frequented the Iberian Peninsula for at the least 29,000 years—fossilized feces containing acid-digested bones place the birds in what’s now Portugal, the place they might have lived alongside human hunter-gatherers. College of Barcelona archaeologist Montserrat Sanz, who helped to find the Portuguese fossils, says the Spanish crew’s finds are “fairly stunning” and can more than likely spark a wave of analysis follow-ups.
A portion of a woven-grass slingshot, a crossbow bolt and lance and a chunk of a basket, all present in layers of vulture nests.
There are many potential time capsules to examine. The vultures’ vary stretches from Tibet to Tanzania, and the birds are unusually prolific nest builders; whereas different vulture species could throw collectively a nest a few weeks earlier than laying their eggs, bearded vultures spend months crafting two to a few nests yearly earlier than selecting one to boost chicks.
It takes a variety of materials to assemble these nests, which may stretch as much as six toes huge. And simply because the vultures use wool from mountain-dwelling sheep as insulation, they’ll make the most of supplies from their human neighbors, too. “They remind us how simply we neglect that we’re a part of the ecosystem,” Sanz says.
Goat horns present in one of many vulture nests.
Some tales, it appears, will repeat themselves wherever vultures and people reside aspect by aspect. The identical month because the paper’s publication, a retailer in Catalonia had an surprising shopper: a younger vulture yanked a number of espadrille sneakers off the racks.
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