Earliest Known Whale Bone Tools Discovered in Europe's Museum Collections
A careful study of artifacts that have spent years tucked away in museum collections across Europe shows that the Magdalenian culture not only worked and used the bones of our planet's largest living beasts, they did so from a range of species, long before they were capable of actively hunting them.
This discovery not only gives is crucial insight into the Magdalenians, but also reveals information about the changing ecology of the Bay of Biscay, off the coast of France and Spain.
"I am an archaeologist more accustomed to terrestrial faunas. I am used to excavating cave sites in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and I work on the Magdalenian period which yielded a well-known cave art showing mostly ungulates (horse, bison, cervids, etc.)," University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès archaeologist and senior author Jean-Marc Pétillon told ScienceAlert.
"The most exciting thing for me is to shed light on how much the sea, and the sea animals, might also have been important for the people at that time."
The Magdalenian culture occupied coastal and inland regions of western Europe flourished some 19,000 to 14,000 years ago as the world was reaching the end of the last glacial period. They left behind a relatively rich archaeological record, but with limitations.
Ancient coastal habitats are particularly prone to the ravages of time and the ocean, and most of the record of the use of coastal resources comes from inland, where artifacts had been transported.
It's from these inland sites that archaeolologists excavated the Magdalenian artifacts: "more than 150 tools and projectile heads made of whale bone presumably of Atlantic origin, mostly found scattered from Asturias to the central part of the northern Pyrenean range," writes a team led by Krista McGrath of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Laura G. van der Sluis of the University of Vienna.
Hunting and seafaring techniques to prey on whales would not emerge until thousands of years later, so the bones would have been gleaned opportunistically from whales stranding themselves on the seashore. The Magdalenians then used the foraged material to craft tools – mostly projectile points, Pétillon explained.
"The main raw material used to manufacture the points at that period is antler (from reindeer or red deer), because it is less brittle and more pliable than land mammal bone," he said.
"The fact that some points are made of whale bone shows that this material was preferred over antler in certain cases. It is probably because of its large dimensions: some of our whale bone points were more than 40 centimeters [16 inches] long, which is difficult to get with antler."
To learn more about the timing and use of whale bone as a material, the researchers turned to two relatively modern techniques: a paleoproteomics method that analyzes collagen peptides in ancient samples to identify species; and micro-carbon dating, which is a variation of radiocarbon dating that requires less material.
By carefully using these techniques on their samples, the researchers dated the bone tools to between 16,000 and 20,000 years ago. At least five different species of large whales contributed their bones to Magdalenian technology – which tells us about the ecology of the region during the last glacial period.
"Our study shows that there was a large diversity of whale species in the Gulf of Biscay, northeastern North Atlantic, at that period. Most of the species we identified (sperm whale, blue whale, fin whale) are present in the North Atlantic today; in this perspective, their presence is not surprising," Pétillon said.
"What was more surprising to me – as an archaeologist more accustomed to terrestrial faunas – was that these whale species remained the same despite the great environmental difference between the Late Pleistocene and today. In the same period, continental faunas are very different: the ungulates hunted include reindeer, saiga antelopes, bison, etc., all disappeared from Western Europe today."
Interestingly, analysis of carbon and nitrogen isotopes absorbed from the environment as the animals fed show that these whales had a slightly different diet from those of the same species that are around today.
It's impossible to determine what exactly this means – perhaps migration patterns were different, or food availability – but it does show a level of adaptability to changing circumstances, whatever those were.
The presence of the whales in the Bay of Biscay would have been a draw for the Magdalenian culture, the researchers believe, offering a resource opportunity too good to pass up. Although whale strandings may not have been a frequent occurrence, they would have contributed to the list of benefits coastal living would have had to offer, playing a role in human mobility patterns in the region.
It's a fascinating, multi-layered result that underscores the value of revisiting previously collected objects and seeing what new information we can discover with new techniques.
"Even old collections, excavated more than one century ago with field methods now outdated, and stored in museums for a long time, can bring new scientific information when approached with the right analytical tools," Pétillon said.
The research has been published in Nature Communications.
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Atlantic
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An Ajax gets no fame in the day of telescopic-sighted rifles.' As we get closer to the present, a note of sarcasm creeps into the word's usage: In the 2000s, the writer Megan McArdle used the recurrent headline 'Sheer Genius' for columns on businesses making terrible errors. But she was far from the first Atlantic writer to use the word sardonically. One of my favorite essays on genius from the archives is a satirical squib from 1900, which masquerades as an ad for a Genius Discovery Company. 'This country needs more geniuses,' the anonymous author wrote. 'Everybody knows it. Everybody admits it. Everybody laments it.' The article urged any reader who wondered whether they might be a genius to write in, enclosing a five-dollar fee, 'and we will tell you the truth by return mail.'
Scientific American
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CBS News
2 days ago
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United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket blasts off on first Space Force-sanctioned flight
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The Centaur second stage's two hydrogen-fueled Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10C engines ignited and took over from there, but in keeping with standard policy for military missions, ULA ended its launch commentary at that point and the rest of the flight was carried out in secrecy. At least two satellites were believed to be on board: one fully classified spacecraft and an experimental satellite that will carry out tests of upgraded atomic clocks and navigation technology that could lead to more accurate, jam-proof Global Positioning System-type data for military and commercial users. Both satellites were bound for geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the equator, where spacecraft take 24 hours to complete one orbit, thus appearing stationary in the sky. 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"And with NTS-3, we are going to be experimenting with a number of different technologies that look at how we can continue to evolve and augment GPS to make sure that it remains the gold standard that our warfighters need." While the major goal of the flight is launching the USSF-106 payloads, the launch marked a major milestone for United Launch Alliance. It was the third launch of the powerful new Vulcan after two test flights last year and the first to be "certified" by the Space Force to carry costly national security spy satellites and other expensive military spacecraft. "This mission is headed directly to geosynchronous orbit and will be one of our longest missions to date," said Gary Wentz, ULA vice president of government and commercial programs. "This is the sole purpose of this vehicle. It was purposely designed to support these missions doing direct inject to geo for the Space Force." The Vulcan is replacing ULA's already-retired Delta family of rockets and the venerable Atlas 5, which is powered by a Russian-built RD-180 first stage engine. Criticism of ULA's use of Russian engines for launches of American military satellites and NASA spacecraft helped fuel congressional pressure for a new all-American launcher. Thirteen Atlas 5's are left in ULA's inventory, all of them slated for civilian launches as ULA, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, transitions to an all-Vulcan fleet. In the meantime, SpaceX dominates the world launch market with its partially reusable and highly successful kerosene-fueled Falcon 9 and triple-core Falcon Heavy rockets. So far this year, SpaceX has launched 97 Falcon 9s. But ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno said the Vulcan's first stage, using high-performance BE-4 engines provided by Blue Origin — owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — and its high-power Centaur upper stage make the rocket particularly well suited for launching heavy military payloads into hard-to-reach orbits. "It is specifically designed for these exotic orbits that are primarily for the government," he said. "And this particular mission is the quintessential example. It is a direct injection to geosynchronous orbit. That means that it is a very, very long-duration mission." He said the first stage is, in effect, delivering the Centaur to space with a full load of propellant "to go from LEO (low-Earth orbit) to somewhere else, like all the way to the geo belt, which is 20 times higher up. And what that translates to in capability (is) certainly more mass and more accuracy than is easily done by others." While he didn't mention SpaceX or its Falcon Heavy by name, or ULA's retired Delta 4 Heavy, Bruno said "if you're a typical three-core heavy launch vehicle and ... really derived from a vehicle optimized for that LEO mission, you're going to have to have three cores to get out there, and you're going to have to expend all of them. "And here's the really complicated rocket science. You know, one core is cheaper and more efficient than three expendable cores. It's literally that simple." That, coupled with the high-energy Centaur upper stage, gives ULA the capability to launch heavy payloads directly to high orbits without requiring satellites to use their own thrusters — and limited propellant — in transit. ULA is expanding its ground infrastructure and expects to launch nine flights in 2025, reaching a cadence of two per month by the end of the year. The company expects to launch between 20 and 25 flights in 2026.
