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WASHINGTON - Inupiat Eskimos hunting from seal skin canoes off the Alaskan coast have discovered a weapon fragment embedded in the neck of a whale, revealing that it survived a similar hunt by their ancestors more than 100 years ago.
The hunting party caught the 50-tonne bowhead whale from an umiaq, a large vessel like a longboat made from sealskin. They found a 9cm arrow-shaped projectile embedded in its blubber, with notches on the side - enabling researchers to estimate the whale's age at between 115 and 130 years old. Alaskan hunters traditionally carved notches into lance heads used in 19th-century hunts. The lance fragments had similar notches.
The oldest any whale can live is thought to be about 200 years.
- INDEPENDENT
