The first whalers were not from the north, but from Brazil

BarcelonaIt has been generally believed that the first whalers came from the Northern Hemisphere and threw their harpoons into icy seas. They took the risk because they lacked many natural resources and, if they didn't want to starve, they had few alternatives. New research presents a different story. According to the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and the UAB's Department of Prehistory, indigenous communities in southern Brazil were hunting large cetaceans 5,000 years ago, about a thousand years before the first documented evidence in Arctic and Pacific societies. Specifically, these intrepid whalers came from Babitonga Bay in southern Brazil. "They were probably young men seeking social recognition and increased prestige. They shouldn't have ventured too far out to sea, because southern right whales, for example, come very close to the shore," says André Carlo Colonese, who co-authored the article with Krista McGrath, published this Friday in the magazine. Nature Communications"The most likely hypothesis is that they went hunting in boats made from a single log, sometimes more than five or seven meters long, which could carry about thirty people, and they must have set out in groups," Colonese explains. They threw harpoons and waited for the whale, exhausted, to drown. "To prevent it from sinking, they most likely used floats made from the intestines of large animals," he adds. To document and demonstrate that whales were already being hunted on the coasts of Brazil more than 5,000 years ago, researchers have followed the trail of the sambaquis, the monumental mounds of shells that these Holocene societies built along the coast. They have analyzed hundreds of cetacean bone remains from these small mountains, which are more than 6,000 years old and could reach 30 meters in height. "Many mounds have disappeared because, from colonization until the 1960s, when the first heritage protection laws were enacted, they were looted primarily for lime production," explains Colonese. Fortunately, some pioneering archaeologists, such as the German Guilherme Tiburtius, saved part of this ancestral heritage, which is currently preserved in the Sambaquis Archaeological Museum in Joinville, Brazil. The sambaquis contained the remains of southern right whales, humpback whales, blue whales, northern right whales, sperm whales, and dolphins, many with clear cut marks associated with butchering. Large harpoons made of whalebone have also been found, some of the largest discovered in South America.

30-meter crustacean mounds

"The sambaquis were built over centuries, and often there were human burials underneath. Different generations came to the same place and contributed to enlarging the sambaqui. Some of the harpoons we found were part of the grave goods in these burials. They surely had a ritual character and were not customary. In addition to rewriting the origins of whaling, the study also provides new information about the communities that lived on the South American Atlantic coast. "It represents a paradigm shift: now we can see these groups not only as shellfish gatherers and fishermen, but also as whalers," says Colonese. "When the Europeans arrived, many of these communities had already abandoned whaling." "Perhaps that's why there was a belief that this practice was quite exceptional in the Southern Hemisphere," she adds. "The data clearly demonstrate that these communities developed the knowledge, tools, and specialized strategies necessary to hunt large whales thousands of years earlier than we previously thought," says Krista McGrath. In addition to rewriting the origins of early whaling, the study offers new insights into the economies, technologies, and ways of life of post-glacial societies along the South American Atlantic coast. It shows that they developed a sophisticated maritime culture characterized by specialized technologies, collective cooperation, and ritual practices associated with the capture of large marine animals. There is evidence of the possible use of whale remains dating back some 115,000 years in South Africa through beads that traveled attached to the cetaceans. In June 2025, research by ICTA-UAB demonstrated, through 83 bone tools excavated in archaeological sites, including 90 bones from the Santa Caterina cave (Vizcaya), show that prehistoric societies used the meat, fat, bones, baleen, and teeth between 19,000 and 20,000 years ago. However, these Paleolithic societies did not hunt but rather made use of resources when a whale accidentally became beached.