Ancient tools made from whale bones dating back 20,000 years were found in Spain. The study reveals both early human use of marine resources and shifts in whale feeding behavior.
Humans were making tools from whale bones as early as 20,000 years ago, according to a study by researchers from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and the University of British Columbia.
This discovery expands our understanding of how early humans used whale remains and provides important insight into the marine ecosystems of that period.
Challenges of studying ancient coastal life
Whales, the largest animals on Earth, provided early coastal communities with vital resources like food, oil, and bone. Because of this, they are thought to have been essential to the survival of many human groups living near the sea. However, uncovering the history of human-whale interactions is difficult, as coastal archaeological sites are fragile and often lost to rising sea levels, which makes preserving early evidence especially challenging.
The research, led by Jean-Marc Pétillon of the CNRS and Krista McGrath of ICTA-UAB, and published in Nature Communications, examined 83 bone tools found at archaeological sites around the Bay of Biscay in Spain, along with 90 additional bone fragments from Santa Catalina Cave in the same region. The researchers used mass spectrometry and radiocarbon dating to determine the species and age of the bones.
Identifying whale species through bone analysis
“Our study reveals that the bones came from at least five species of large whales, the oldest of which date to approximately 19,000–20,000 years ago. These represent some of the earliest known evidence of humans using whale remains as tools,” says Jean-Marc Pétillon, senior author of the research.
According to Krista McGrath, leading author of the paper, “ZooMS is a powerful technique for investigating past sea mammal diversity, particularly when diagnostic morphometric elements are missing from bone remains and objects, which is often the case for bone artefacts. We managed to identify species such as sperm whales, fin whales, blue whales, all still present in the Bay of Biscay today, as well as grey whales, a species now mostly restricted to the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans.”
In addition, chemical data extracted from the bones suggest that the feeding habits of these ancient whales differed slightly from those of their modern counterparts, pointing to potential changes in behavior or the marine environment. Overall, this discovery not only enhances our understanding of early human use of whale remains but also sheds light on the role whales played in past ecosystems.
Reference: “Late Paleolithic whale bone tools reveal human and whale ecology in the Bay of Biscay” by Krista McGrath, Laura G. van der Sluis, Alexandre Lefebvre, Anne Charpentier, Ana S. L. Rodrigues, Esteban Álvarez-Fernández, François Baleux, Eduardo Berganza, François-Xavier Chauvière, Morgane Dachary, Elsa Duarte Matías, Claire Houmard, Ana B. Marín-Arroyo, Marco de la Rasilla Vives, Jesus Tapia, François Thil, Olivier Tombret, Leire Torres-Iglesias, Camilla Speller, Antoine Zazzo and Jean-Marc Pétillon, 27 May 2025, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59486-8
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