http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,21897911-5005940,00.html

From correspondents in Anchorage

June 13, 2007 12:00pm

A FRAGMENT of a lance used by commercial whalers in the 1800s has been found in a huge bowhead whale caught off Alaska.

The fragment, from a bomb lance manufactured around 1880, was discovered in a bowhead killed in the traditional subsistence hunt conducted by Alaska's Inupiat people, said officials from the North Slope Borough, the local government in northernmost Alaska.

The fragment showed the whale could be nearly 130 years old, said Craig George, a wildlife biologist with the borough's Department of Wildlife Management.

"It was probably at least a yearling when it was struck, because the whalemen never took calves," Mr George said.

The find added to recent information suggesting bowhead whales had life spans that extended past a century, he said.

The newly accumulated information included the discovery of old stone tools, last used in the 1880s, in whales hunted in the early 1990s, as well as analysis of the lenses of whales' eyes, he said.

The fragment of the bomb lance was given to scientists by the Inupiat whalers, Mr George said.

This particular device was easy to date because it was patented, he said.

The Inupiat had long said bowhead whales lived for the equivalent of two human lifetimes, Mr George said.

"That's their traditional knowledge. We're still catching up," he said.

While commercial whaling is now banned by international agreement, natives from Alaska, the Chukotka region of eastern Russia and Greenland are permitted to hunt a fixed number of whales for traditional, non-commercial consumption.

In Alaska, meat from hunted whales is distributed to all residents of the hunters' villages.

Interesting. Whenever I read stuff like this I can't help but wonder who/when it was done, and also where the whale may have traveled in all those years...
Thanks.

Proving again that only good hits count !! Yes I'd like to hear the whole story .How often did they hit and not recover with an explosive harpoon ??

Somewhat similiar, here is an arrowhead in a human pelvis from Ireland circa 3600BC.


http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.clare...-01,GWYA:en%26sa%3DN

This is great stuff!

Cool report.

Yesterday I was showing my son a tree that was here before George Washington was born.

And last night I was looking at some samurai swords on the internet that were made before Christopher Columbus found the new world. And those swords looked great!