They have done what the Inupiat Eskimos’ ancestors failed to do more than 100 years ago. Staying eluded from a similar hunt, for 100 long years, with a weapon fragment embedded in the neck, a whale was recently hunted down off the Alaskan coast.
Yes, that the whale survived a similar hunt by their ancestors is well clear by the notches on the side of the weapon, indicating its coming from an Inupiat village that lived 100 years ago.
Thus, the estimated 115 to 130 year-old whale provided with an unusual find of old things.
The scientists could immediately confirm the weapon to be ‘old’ by its shape, as the Alaskan hunters traditionally used to carve notches into the lance heads, to indicate ownership of the whale, which they used in the 19th century.
Though it is difficult to calculate the age of a whale, it could be well assessed in this whale’s case by the weapon find. The oldest any whale can live is thought to be about 200 years.
John Bockstoce, a whaling expert who spent 10 years hunting with the Inupiat said,
This is really exciting. No other finding has allowed us to date a whale’s age with such precision.
The weapon, then, could not hit any lethal place, surviving the 50-ton bow-head whale through 100 long years, just to fall prey to the hands of their decedents. Weaker laws and restrictions have led natural death of whales as a rare destiny.
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