A member of a whaling crew waves a flag at the start of the butchering of a just-captured bowhead whale in the outskirts of Barrow, Alaska, in 1998.
Luciana Whitaker/CON/LatinContent/Getty Images
In excavated waste heaps along the western coast of Greenland, researchers have found evidence that ancient Greenlanders, known as the paleo-Inuit or Saqqaq, may have been eating large amounts of bowhead whale. But these 4000-year-old dumpsters are from millennia before humans had specialized technology to hunt down such massive prey.
The pits are filled with the bones from other animals, like harp seals and caribou, but barely any whale. Out of around 100,000 excavated bones, only a mere hundred fragments were identified as bowhead whale parts – perhaps three bones in total. But in the greasy soil, an analysis revealed a great deal of bowhead whale DNA. About half of the…
A member of a whaling crew waves a flag at the start of the butchering of a just-captured bowhead whale in the outskirts of Barrow, Alaska, in 1998.
Luciana Whitaker/CON/LatinContent/Getty Images
In excavated waste heaps along the western coast of Greenland, researchers have found evidence that ancient Greenlanders, known as the paleo-Inuit or Saqqaq, may have been eating large amounts of bowhead whale. But these 4000-year-old dumpsters are from millennia before humans had specialized technology to hunt down such massive prey.
The pits are filled with the bones from other animals, like harp seals and caribou, but barely any whale. Out of around 100,000 excavated bones, only a mere hundred fragments were identified as bowhead whale parts – perhaps three bones in total. But in the greasy soil, an analysis revealed a great deal of bowhead whale DNA. About half of the…
