Whales have for millennia provided humans with a wide source of materials. For thousands of years these would have been from whales washed ashore, but with some hunting by coastal peoples.
Hunting whales became a massive industry as whale oil, baleen for corsets, and other parts of the marine giants, became extremely profitable. Hunting whales still continues today even though we no longer require any parts of their bodies to ensure our survival.
Research, led by Jean-Marc Pétillon, the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) along with the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( ICTA-UAB) scientist Krista McGrath, and published in Nature Communications, has analysed 83 bone tools excavated from sites around the Bay of Biscay in Spain, along with 90 additional bones from Santa Catalina Cave, also located in the province of Biscay.
Mass spectrometry and radiocarbon was used to date, identify the species and age the samples.
Jean-Marc Pétillon explained:
“Our study reveals that the bones came from at least five species of large whales, the oldest of which date to approximately 19,000–20,000 years ago. These represent some of the earliest known evidence of humans using whale remains as tools.”
Krista McGrath,added:
“ZooMS is a powerful technique for investigating past sea mammal diversity, particularly when diagnostic morphometric elements are missing from bone remains and objects, which is often the case for bone artefacts.
“We managed to identify species such as sperm whales, fin whales, blue whales, all still present in the Bay of Biscay today, as well as grey whales, a species now mostly restricted to the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans”.
In addition, chemical data extracted from the bones suggest that the feeding habits of these ancient whales differed slightly from those of their modern counterparts, pointing to potential changes in behaviour or the marine environment.
Overall, this discovery not only enhances our understanding of early human use of whale remains but also sheds light on the role whales played in past ecosystems.
Archaeological excavations in Orkney have revealed the use of whale bone by the islands’ earliest communities.
Stromness Museum has an area devoted to the whale hunting that Orcadians were involved in until the industry ceased in Scotland in 1963.
Click on this link to access, Late Paleolithic whale bone tools reveal human and whale ecology in the Bay of Biscay, published in Nature Communications.
Fiona Grahame
