New research has indicated that humans used whale bones to create tools as many as 20,000 years ago. These findings have provided new insights into the cultures and abilities of ancient humans, and how they used whale remains. It also provides us with some information about the marine ecology of that time period. The findings, which were reported in Nature Communications, come after an analysis of 83 bone tools that were collected from sites around Spain's Bay of Biscay, and another 90 bones from Santa Catalina Cave, which is in Spain's Biscay province.
At one time, whaling was a huge industry. Whales could not only supply humans with food, but also with teeth, bone, skin, and oil from blubber. These massive animals have long played a crucial role in the cultures and societies of many human coastal populations around the world.
But these coasts are also fragile and dynamic. Erosion and rising sea levels also threaten coastal archaeological sites, and it is particularly challenging to find and preserve evidence of interactions between humans and marine mammals in these areas.
“Our study reveals that the bones came from at least five species of large whales, the oldest of which date to approximately 19,000 to 20,000 years ago. These represent some of the earliest known evidence of humans using whale remains as tools," said senior study author Jean-Marc Pétillon of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
In this work, mass spectrometry and radiocarbon dating was applied to the excavated samples to reveal the species they came from and how old they are.
Mass spectrometry (MS) has been used to find small differences in the amino acid sequences of proteins of different species. Researchers have done this for a protein that is commonly found in organisms, and known as collagen, which can also persist for a very long time in mineralized tissue samples. Now, a close analysis of collagen in bone fragments can tell researchers a lot about excavated samples.
“ZooMS [zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry] 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 artifacts," explained first study author Krista McGrath of ICTA-UAB. "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.”
The data collected from the bone fragments also suggested that ancient whales had feeding habits that may have differed a bit from modern whales, and that their marine habitats may have changed since then as well.
Sources: University of Barcelona, Nature Communications