Die Jagd auf Großwale reicht viel weiter zurück als bisher angenommen. Indigene Gemeinschaften im Süden Brasiliens jagten bereits vor 5.000 Jahren große Wale, etwa tausend Jahre vor den frühesten dokumentierten Belegen für arktische und nordpazifische Gesellschaften.

Published in Nature Communications, the study shows that groups in the region of Babitonga Bay (Santa Catarina) who built sambaquis – monumental shell mounds built by Holocene societies along the coast of Brazil – developed specialized technologies for hunting large whales long before earlier archaeological research had suggested. The study redefines the role of South American communities in the emergence of complex maritime culture as, until now, the origins of large-whale hunting were believed to lie among postglacial societies of the Northern Hemisphere between 3,500 and 2,500 years ago.

Led by ICTA-UAB researchers Krista McGrath and André Colonese and conducted with an international team, the study analysed hundreds of cetacean bone remains and bone tools from sambaquis in Babitonga Bay, now housed at the Museu Arqueológico de Sambaqui de Joinville, Brazil. Many of the sites no longer exist, making this collection a unique archive of a history that otherwise could not have been reconstructed.

The team combined zooarchaeology, typological analysis, and cutting-edge molecular techniques (ZooMS) to study the cetacean bones and objects, identifying remains of the southern right whales, humpback whales, blue whales, sei whales, sperm whales, and dolphins, many showing clear cut marks associated with butchering. Large whale-bone harpoons were also documented among the largest found in South America. Their presence, alongside the abundance of whale bones, their inclusion in funerary contexts and the presence of inshore species, provides strong evidence of active hunting rather than opportunistic use of stranded animals.

“The data reveals that these communities had the knowledge, tools, and specialized strategies to hunt large whales thousands of years earlier than we had previously assumed,” says Krista McGrath, lead author of the study.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-67530-w