Toggling harpoon

In Serbia, a few antler artifacts in the shape of toggle harpoons have been made by the Vinča culture (D phase dated c. 4850-4500 cal BC), but their true use is not conclusive.

Norwegian archaeologist Gutorm Gjessing claimed to identify a distribution of toggle harpoons from Greenland to as far west as the White Sea of western Russia.

From the lower Amur Basin, and itself probably derived from the coast of Chukotka, points identified as harpoon heads spread down into Hokkaido and into the hands of the Jomon culture close to 6,000 years ago.

However, in the early second millennium BCE, evidence of toggling harpoons was found among the Red Paint People of Port aux Choix off the coast of Newfoundland,[7] further driving debates of Paleo-Inuit cross-cultural diffusion that have gone on since the 19th century.

Despite Basque, English and Dutch whalers operating in and near the Arctic and interacting with the Inuit for centuries, they had continued to use simple, non-toggling harpoon heads that they had desperately tried and failed to improve.