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What's up with this title? At the time of writing this, it's worded as:
"Medieval Icelanders were likely hunting blue whales long industrial technology"
Seems they were trying to hunt industrial tech from whales. I guess a "before" went missing before "industrial"?
The blue whales had been investing their funds in industrial technology, and the Medieval Icelanders did not like that. This unfortunate event delayed the Industrial Revolution by centuries.
Per Occam’s Razor, this is the most likely explanation. The title can be fixed with a simple comma, instead of some multi-character, multi-syllable word like “before”.
Let's eat grandma
Chewy and stringy, and tastes like... Camel?
Then again, as she always said, "Smoked meat lasts longer."
Whales were so close to becoming the dominant species, but Icelanders fortunately stole their industrial technology in the last moment.
Long industrial technology, Short pre-industrial technology
Article's far-too-long-for-HN Subtitle:
> New research suggests that medieval Icelanders were scavenging and likely even hunting blue whales long before industrial whaling technology
But the actual title is not too long at all
"How Viking-Age Hunters Took Down the Biggest Animal on Earth" is far more clicky than informative.
Petty I know, but it actually bothers me that they took the whales up from the ocean, not "down".
Doesn't matter. Its the title.
There's a missing comma, OP is telling us to buy stocks in companies that are in the business of industrial technology
Yeah weird. If it was done for length-reasons, maybe better omit the "long" instead of "before"?
Look you can either have AI written articles or train wreck titles written by humans. Which one do you want? /s
Reminds me of the Oregon Trail game where one buffalo was way more than you can bring back.
"You shot 290,000 pounds of food, but were only able to carry 100 pounds back."
Theres also cave painting "evidence" that people were hunting Sperm and Humpbacks whales and (to me more impressive) Orcas in Korea 8000 years ago:
I'd assume that cave orcas were much smaller than regular ones.
Interesting timing to see this since today/yesterday saw a headline about a cruise ship coming in to port with a dead whale stuck to the bow.
We’ve come from “losing 5 spears in a day and giving up whale hunting” to killing them accidentally.
From a purely historical lens whale hunting in a small boat is one of the most extreme things I can imagine. The closest I’ve physically come to whales is sailing and hearing a pod breathing while swimming past - I was scared since the unexpected sound was quite loud and deep.
Just spit balling here but interesting to think of whales “hunting humans” as we’ve seen them start taking out more pleasure craft around Europe (and elsewhere?) in the past few years. Would be curious to “hear” their side of history!
I suspect they are just pissed off with us.
I did a whale watching tour from Húsavík last year on a cranky old boat. We found one but the poor thing was asleep apparently, just surfacing every few minutes to breathe. Immediately buzzed by about 5 boats full of people every time it surfaced, two pictured here: https://imgur.com/a/g4em6sc . I think I'd be in the mood to tip a fishing boat after that every day.
There was an orca (technically not a whale) on the west coast of canada that famously ripped fishfinders off the bottoms of boats. Evidently it didn't like their noise. But it wasn't just the active ones. It found and ripped them off parked boats too.
Technically yes, a whale. Orcas are the biggest dolphins, and dolphins in turn are the smallest whales.
Very similar experience, it was cool seeing & hearing a whale up close, but man that must be annoying for the whale.
I did the same in Husavik some... 8 years ago in wintery conditions (april iirc, inland was completely inpassable and even ring road had heaps of snow) and they were fine, we saw plenty of them and pretty active (mostly mink whales). Maybe bad luck or they are quite seasonal?
I'd say medieval icelanders did everything before industrial technology
Pretty cool story; but I'm pretty amazed by the detail in the Italian map of the area.
It's a very cool map, but it is actually scandinavian in origin (Swedish). I also noted the "italian map" remark in the article.
It is in latin tho, and created in Rome. It is the oldest "complete" map where scandinavia is depicted with any kind of accuracy.
https://archive.org/details/map-1539
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The map is truly a historical marvel. Especially at higher resolutions, can see many country details around the Baltics and Scandinavia, down to Poland, and part of Scotland and England.
Strange animals and details of different warfare.
The land where St.Petersburg is doesn't seem to exist, and the white sea looks like a lake. That's pretty interesting.
Make me want to replay Heroes of Might and Magic
It's so cool, made it my new wallpaper.
Folks will probably enjoy Matt Lakeman's series on whaling https://mattlakeman.org/2021/06/01/everything-you-might-want...
About the female whale whose dorsal fin was punctured: "Ólafur appears to have developed a personal kinship with the whale"
A macabre kinship that involved spearing her calf. And eventually, killing the female whale herself while trying to kill her calf again.
That is a partial quote:
"Ólafur appears to have developed a personal kinship with the whale, choosing not to try to kill her again. But he had no problem shooting the whale’s calf. One summer, when he raised his spear and took aim at the calf, his spear went askew, hitting the mother instead.
With that, he’d had enough. That was the last time Ólafur speared a whale."
A mother's love is unconditional like 99% of the time regardless of the species and humans are more or less the same across culture, time and space 99% of the time :(
does anyone ever think about a less vicious world? like I know evolution / survival of the fittest all that is a thing but did it have to be like this? Could we have evolved without killing?
> A mother's love is unconditional ...
There are many people whose personal experience is decidedly not like that, so "citation needed".
It's rather common in rodents that they eat their offspring, as many parents that kept hamsters for their kids know.
In sheep it's somewhat common for first-time mothers to not want their offspring and refuse them the early ('raw'?) milk, which is pretty much a death sentence. A slow, painful death unless culled by a human.
The term mother isn't very clear in itself. Who is the mother in an anthill?
That's an interesting question. In principle intelligence could evolve as a fitness indicator. That is, a species of herbivorous apes could select mates for ability in music, art, and story-telling, and then you get a gentle tribe of orangutan-like creatures with human-like culture. However, unless they specifically settle on non-killing as the fitness indicator, I don't see why they'd be consistent about it. Even an orangutan may eat a slow loris from time to time. It's more morality's business than evolution's.
Beautiful idea, but of course people have thought about and wished for an alternative and less viscous world for thousands of years. The current paradigm is the worst possible, except all others.
Killing is the easiest way to get lots of calories and building materials. Plants do it, too.
>A mother's love is unconditional like 99% of the time regardless of the species
That's just BS. In many species, the mother never has any interaction at all with the young. In some species, it's not particularly uncommon for a mother to eat her young.
This is another of this latest historical or scientific news that look a lot like created by AI.
> Over half of the bones came from blue whales.
This claim just does not made a lot of sense.
> Spectroscopy, which reveals the chemical makeup of bones by analyzing collagen proteins found in bone fragments, is cheaper and faster than DNA analysis.
And much more inaccurate, it seems. Again, we have big claims (that people will repeat for decades) supported by dwarf proofs or subpar methods.
I want to play this game also: "Scientists discover that spears make whales autistic".
What's a "dwarf proof"?
It's been an open secret in the industry for a long time that autism in whales is caused by harpoons, but big plankton doesn't want it to become public knowledge. In fact many believe that smaller harpoons can have the same effect in humans as studies have shown (2023, Ishmael et al.)
This is a bogus claim. The Ishmael guy just starts the paper by proclaiming his name. That's no way to start a rigorous dissertation. The publishing year is wrong too.
> What's a "dwarf proof"?
A proof with a stunted development obviously, so it never grow as tall as the other proofs and can be spotted as dubious from a mile even if it wears high soles to hide it.