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Medieval Icelanders were likely hunting blue whales before industrial technology
New research suggests that medieval Icelanders were scavenging and likely even hunting blue whales long before industrial whaling technology.
Camilla Speller, an archaeologist at Canada’s University of British Columbia who is not involved in the Iceland project, says these technologies have helped change our knowledge of past human-whale relations, as well as our understanding of the diversity of whales that historical humans hunted. As the climate shifted from the medieval warm period, which ended in the 13th century, to the colder temperatures of the little ice age, evidence of many smaller whale species disappeared from the archaeological record. Ævar Petersen, an independent Icelandic biologist and consultant for Szabo’s project, suspects people may have hunted the smaller calves of the species, which can be more curious toward humans and more manageable once dead.
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