Whale bone DNA gives new clues to Iron Age Orkney life

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-50308033

If they had iron in their tools, they could have very easily made a harpoon that could have killed a whale of that size.

They may have had flint tools and weapons. I'm not sure when flint arrived in Orkney or who brought it there, I thought that it was the Vikings but I'm probably wrong. Every time that you find flint in Orkney you know that it has been handled by a human thousands of years ago.

You often find dead whales and whale bones on the beaches there. I thought that it was interesting that the carcass may have been used as a burial chamber and wonder what could have made people do that.

Could it be that the animal known as a whale was worshipped----and that its remains served as a symbol of its "greatness?" And that the burial chamber was "built-in," and another didn't have to be constructed?

Flint, of course, was probably the most common material used for tools in the various Stone Ages.

It could have been Picts,they lived in northern Scotland during the late iron age.

Yeah, there are other old burial chambers that are long and oblong, like a dead whale's rib cage, I immediately thought of that. It's really magic up there, there aren't any trees and there aren't any large mammals that are native to the islands, only whales and seals that inhabited the sea.



I'll have to find out now! I remember that archeologists found a large fort, full of the remains of sacrificial animals, the Island fort had been abandoned suddenly.

Flint is a rock. It was used by stone age folks to make tools. That's why its called "the stone age". Long before the Vikings.

Though actual flint (as opposed to other lower quality rocks) may not be in abundance in the Orkneys, and may have to be traded from Britain or Europe somewhere if you are a stone age tool maker.

Whales, and whaling, was a special interest when I was a kid, and I read Moby Dick. Folks with iron tipped harpoons might have been able to kill whales even larger than their small crude pre Viking era boats including whales like the seventy foot long finback. But the trouble with most species of whales is that they sink when they die. Only a few species stay afloat so their human hunters can tow them ashore. Even in the 19th century days of Herman Melville when they had big sailing ships that functioned as floating oil refineries for rendering whale fat.. they would still have to tie the dead whale to the side of the ship while they butchered its floating carcass. The Greenland Right whale floats when dead and so does the Sperm Whale (that's what Moby Dick was, no pun intended). But blues and finbacks just friggin sink like rocks. So I vote for the theory that that finback whale was a washed ashore carcass of one that died with out humans killing it. Not evidence of human being advanced whalers. It wasn't until the 20th century, when they were able to inflate whale carcasses with air hoses (like balloons) to keep them afloat did all species of big whales become viable as targets for commercial whalers in engine powered ships.


But a dead whale ( as either a hunting trophy or as an accidental thing washed ashore- by the gods) would be considered an awe inspiring thing. Either way it would make a kind of nature made temple to bury a high status person in. Like a pyramid for a pharaoh.

I guess you wouldn't just leave it there, it would have been a big deal! These days, when the locals find something washed up on the beach, they tie a bit of string (fishing net string) around it and come back some time later with a car to pick it up. Sometimes its whale bones and people take them back to put in their gardens. It's nice the way you can leave stuff lying around up there for days and no one will touch it.

I wish there were more stories like this one in the news.

Just look in the archaeological journals.

Have you studied anthropology/archaeology at all?

I studied it on my own when I was very young.

I'll find out more about Orkney because it's a place that I visit.

You can find small chips of flint underneath the sandy beaches after a storm.

This story grabbed me for a few reasons.

A whale washed up on a beach in the UK recently with a belly full of plastic (last week maybe) and I heard on the radio this week that stories with a similar theme to Jonah and the whale crop up in other mythologies.

When we see a whale dying from ingesting plastic on TV it affects a lot of people, people take it as a sign, it's like a turning point. Or when a whale swims up an estuary by mistake, everyone wills it to swim back out to sea.

To many, this is a sign that we have to start respecting Nature more.

Thank you for posting. I am in awe of new discoveries and procedures and how DNA sequencing can be use to see which bones belong to which animals.

I concur. One of my favorite things to read about and then ponder.

If we had DNA technology in the 1910s, we wouldn’t have had the Piltdown Man hoax.

True. Even if it was a hoax, I bet it was fun to think about for a little while. And more than a little disconcerting.

I like the idea of ancient people using bones to can food.

https://www.livescience.com/marrow-bones-prehistoric-soup-cans.html