Whaling may have started 1,500 years earlier than already known

Whale hunting began far earlier — and much farther south — than scientists previously suspected.

Five-thousand-year-old whalebone harpoons and other artifacts along Brazil’s southern coast suggest that Indigenous communities actively hunted whales at least 1,500 years before the earliest evidence to date, researchers report January 9 in Nature Communications. The findings not only rewrite the origins of whaling, but also suggest that humpback whales once lived outside their modern range — meaning animals now moving into the region may be reclaiming ancient habitat.

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