Biscay caves housed the oldest until now known of the human use of whale bones. A study, published on Tuesday in Nature Communicationsreveals that some inhabitants of the Vizcaya Gulf region during the upper Paleolithic, used the remains of different types of cetaceans to manufacture tools and weapons approximately 20,000 years ago. The finding is one more step to understand the relationship between humans and whales during prehistory. On the one hand, it expands the understanding of the early use of the remains of these animals and on the other, it offers an overview of the ancient ecology of the cetaceans. “Our findings suggest that marine resources and coastal habitats were more important for some prehistoric communities of what is assumed conventionally,” says Krista McGrath, biomolecular archaeologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and co -author of the study.

Although it is known that whale meat has been the base food of different cultures in the world, the study confirms that European hunters-gatherers also made use of their remains systematically. The researchers analyzed 83 bone tools excavated in deposits of the Vizcaya Gulf between Spain and France and another 90 additional bones without treated found in the Cueva de Santa Catalina, in the province of Vizcaya, which suggests that humans transported these bones to their settlements. Some of them have percussion marks, which would imply the possible extraction of meat or fat. “It is likely that bones and other whale products were used for various purposes. The fact that some of these whale bone artifacts were traded at long distances suggests that they were valued and potentially very desirable objects,” adds McGrath.

Rebuilding the beginning of the use of whale products has become a challenge for science due to the fragility of coastal deposits and the effects of marine erosion and sea level rise. “After the sea level reached its lowest point about 20,000 years ago, it rose more than 100 meters at the end of the last ice age, flooding the coastal areas that these groups previously inhabited,” explains archaeologist Alexandre Lefebvre, of the University of Cantabria and co -author of the study. “Paleolithic hunters-gatherers maintained a close relationship with the marine environment, a connection that was previously known through resource tests such as seafood, fish and sea birds. Cetaceans, however, have been less studied, since their use was limited to the specimens that were stranded on the beaches,” says Lefebvre.

According to current tests, explains the researcher, the use of stranded whales “did not have a central role in the subsistence strategies of paleolithic hunters-gatherers who lived in the Vizcaya Gulf area at the end of the ice age.” However, by providing multiple resources such as bones, meat, fat and beards, their use “probably encouraged human groups to settle on the coast,” he explains.

Five types of whales and a finding that changes everything

The authors used mass spectrometry and radiocarbon dating to identify the taxonomy and age of the samples. They detected at least five species of large whales in samples of approximately 19,000 to 20,000 years ago, which represents one of the first known evidences of human use of whales as tools, scientists point out. The identified species include sperm whales, common rords, blue whales and free whales or whales of Greenland (indistinguishable through this technique). The research highlights the “wide variety of identified whales species” and relates the richness of marine and coastal ecosystems with the existence of human settlements.

These species still live in the same waters, but remains of gray whale were also found, whose population is currently limited to the North Pacific and the Arctic. “The discovery of the Gray Whale in the Vizcaya Gulf at the end of the last glaciation – a area where this species disappeared centuries ago – offers a unique vision of the richness of the marine ecosystem in that period. It also fills an important emptiness in the investigation into gray whales, since the previous evidence of its presence in the North Atlantic dates from a few millennia later (between 10,000 and 250 years ago,” he says Lefebvre.

Additional chemical data of the tools found suggest that the whales of the prehistory had food patterns similar to current whales, however, scientists have detected some differences that could point to changes in the marine ecosystem or in the behavior of the populations of these mammals. “This finding improves our understanding of the long -term evolution of the populations of gray whale in the region and provides reference data on cetacean communities before the significant influence of human activity,” summarizes Lefebvre.

McGrath points out that the understanding of ecological systems provides “great value” for modern conservation practices. “The identification of species that no longer inhabit a region clearly illustrates how species distributions can change over time. It is essential to understand the distribution, abundance and composition of species for a long time to really appreciate the large -scale human impacts of the last centuries,” says the archaeologist. “It also helps us to raise awareness about the magnitude of environmental changes, human exploitation and loss of biodiversity in marine ecosystems from that moment,” Lefebvre adds. As studies advance, researchers expect to discover more details about these giants of the sea and the link they had with humans during prehistory.