ArticleNature communications2025
Late Paleolithic whale bone tools reveal human and whale ecology in the Bay of Biscay.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 2 papers.
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2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Molecular and zooarchaeological identification of 5000 year old whale-bone harpoons in coastal Brazil.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Shifting seas: understanding deep-time human impacts on marine ecosystems.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
21 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Reconstructing how prehistoric humans used the products obtained from large cetaceans is challenging, but key to understand the history of early human coastal adaptations. Here we report the multiproxy analysis (ZooMS, radiocarbon, stable isotopes) of worked objects made of whale bone, and unworked whale bone fragments, found at Upper Paleolithic sites (Magdalenian) around the Bay of Biscay. Taxonomic identification using ZooMS reveals at least five species of large whales, expanding the range of known taxa whose products were utilized by humans in this period. Radiocarbon places the use of whale products ca. 20-14 ka cal BP, with a maximum diffusion and diversity at 17.5-16 ka cal BP, making it the oldest evidence of whale-bone working to our knowledge. δ
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