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Credit: Museu Arqueologico de Sambaquis de Joinville<\/p>\n
Harpoons crafted from the bones of humpback and southern right whales show Indigenous groups in what is now Brazil were hunting whales 5,000 years ago.<\/p>\n
The discovery, which included 118 whale bones and crafted artifacts, reveal that prehistoric whaling was not confined to people in temperate and polar climates in the Northern Hemisphere, according to a study published Jan. 9 in the journal Nature Communications<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Whaling has always been enigmatic,” because it’s difficult to distinguish bone tools made from actively hunted and stranded animals in the archaeological record, study co-author Andr\u00e9 Carlo Colonese<\/a>, a research director at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, told Live Science.<\/p>\n So the new tools are significant because their discovery alongside multiple bone remains from members of the same species represents some of the oldest evidence of active whale hunting in the world, the authors wrote in the study.<\/p>\n Prehistoric whaling<\/p>\n For prehistoric people, whales provided huge feasts, oil for warmth, and bones for tools and cultural ornaments and accessories<\/a>. Although coastal communities have opportunistically salvaged these resources from beached whales for at least 20,000 years<\/a>, the evidence of active hunting is much younger. For example, people hunted large whales with deer bone harpoons 6,000 years ago<\/a> in what is now South Korea, and harpoons from around 3,500 to 2,500 years ago<\/a> have been uncovered in the Arctic and sub-Arctic.<\/p>\n Colonese and his team did not originally set out to investigate early whaling. Instead, they were trying to document the marine species that were used by Indigenous Sambaqui populations in southern Brazil. To do so, they analyzed the molecular signature of precolonial cetacean (whale, dolphin and porpoise) bones at the Joinville Sambaqui Archaeological Museum in Brazil. Of the 118 bone remains with an identifiable cetacean species, most were from southern right whales, but many bones were from humpback whales<\/a>. Only 37 had been crafted into items such as pendants.<\/p>\n It was “completely random” that one of the museum’s curators brought out a box of what were believed to be sticks, Colonese said. But based on their design, such as hollow centers for a wooden shaft and carved tips, he immediately recognized them as harpoons. The team identified 15 harpoon elements, including heads and shaft components, made from either southern right whale or humpback whale rib bones.<\/p>\n The researchers took tiny samples from two harpoon foreshafts to determine their age, which revealed that the tools were between 4,710 and 4,970 years old. Colonese said he jumped for joy when he saw the results because these are some of the oldest harpoons found anywhere in the world \u2014 over 1,000 years older than the Arctic and sub-Arctic examples.<\/p>\n Image 1 of 2<\/p>\n Composite figure of harpoon shaft components made from southern right whale bones<\/p>\n Harpoon socket pieces crafted from southern right whale bones.<\/p>\n Image 2 of 2<\/p>\n Composite figure of harpoon fragments made from humpback and southern right whale bones<\/p>\n Harpoon shaft components crafted from southern right whale and humpback whale bones.<\/p>\n The discovery also showed that these Indigenous populations in Brazil were not simply gathering mollusks and catching fish. “The conventional idea was that the Sambaquis didn’t have the technology” for whaling, Colonese said. “This is telling us that they were actually hunting.”<\/p>\n RELATED STORIES<\/p>\n \u2014‘Richly decorated’ antler from Stone Age Sweden was used as battle ax and fishing harpoon<\/a><\/p>\n \u20142,700-year-old petroglyphs depicting people, ships and animals discovered in Sweden<\/a><\/p>\n \u201410,000-year-old burials from unknown hunter-gatherer group discovered in Brazil<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Composite](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/858f42f53ef4bde0f758aa0586abe09b.jpeg\"\/)
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