[HN Gopher] Medieval Icelanders were likely hunting blue whales ...
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Medieval Icelanders were likely hunting blue whales before
industrial technology
Author : benbreen
Score : 127 points
Date : 2024-05-07 19:12 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hakaimagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hakaimagazine.com)
| mc32 wrote:
| Pretty cool story; but I'm pretty amazed by the detail in the
| Italian map of the area.
| sebmellen wrote:
| It's so cool, made it my new wallpaper.
| shzhdbi09gv8ioi wrote:
| 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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carta_marina
| pomian wrote:
| https://archive.org/details/map-1539 . . 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.
| vadansky wrote:
| Make me want to replay Heroes of Might and Magic
| soperj wrote:
| The land where St.Petersburg is doesn't seem to exist, and
| the white sea looks like a lake. That's pretty interesting.
| pdevr wrote:
| About the female whale whose dorsal fin was punctured: "Olafur
| 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.
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| That is a partial quote:
|
| "Olafur 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 Olafur
| speared a whale."
| chefkd wrote:
| 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?
| thfuran wrote:
| >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.
| chefkd wrote:
| > "mammal mothers eating their young are relatively rare
| and usually occur under extreme stress or adverse
| conditions"
|
| perhaps i meant to say just mammals? would be cool if
| neuroscience advanced enough to figure out what makes
| mammals specifically different but alas like Moses won't
| live long enough to see that day
| card_zero wrote:
| Generally, a tendency for a type of animal to eat its
| young correlates to a strategy of producing a lot of
| them. Rabbits, for instance. I'm blanking on the name of
| it but this is one of a pair of strategies where the
| other is to be long-lived - like humans, or at the
| extreme end, the greenland shark, which has a very low
| metabolism. That's the alternate way of persisting as a
| species: do nothing, and especially don't die.
| throwaway87651 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory
| card_zero wrote:
| That's the one! My mind was polluted with "A/B testing".
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Not only mammals, birds seem to have it from the same
| origin.
|
| Also, some reptiles and fish care for their children.
| Some arthropod too. So it looks like reasonably easy to
| evolve.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| That proves it, they love their offspring so much, they
| could just eat them all up, hair and nails.
| card_zero wrote:
| 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.
| chefkd wrote:
| Assuming a high dimensional multi-variate search space I
| guess that leads to the question what the role of killing
| is in calculating fitness is right?
|
| In my head the more humans / beings have known about
| their world the better the have survived so it makes
| sense intelligence would be a fitness indicator that
| speeds up the search algorithm. But there's no intuitive
| answer to why killing as many people as possible would be
| a fitness indicator like population wasn't a factor until
| recently so it's not like resource scarcity was the issue
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Resource scarcity has always been the issue. Even
| ignoring water ( _still_ an issue), foraging and
| agriculture are both incredibly hard ways to supply food.
| chefkd wrote:
| even if resources were highly limited it seems intuitive
| that the evolution algorithm would prioritize acquiring
| knowledge for efficient resource gathering over killing
| long term wouldn't it?
|
| Let's say cave person a figured out how to dig a well
| cave person b not so much. cave person b kills cave
| person a to get the well and uses it for x years then
| dies because they didn't acquire the knowledge to dig
| another one. so cave person c will be like "protec well
| digger hooman". same for foraging let's say cave person a
| killed cave person b who was extremely good at
| remembering where trees are in a given area sure cave
| person a got a meal for today but is gonna die out unless
| they develop the skills cave person a had
|
| sorry I'm a homeless dropout maybe I'm missing something
| super obvious I'm still not seeing the how killing leads
| to an optimum solution. Maybe a local maxima for sure but
| not the most optimal solution in the search space and as
| civilized as humans have become killing still persists
| I've seen some brutal stuff by some insanely rich folk
| (at least to me) that had absolutely nothing to do with
| resources so maybe that's coloring my viewpoint but idk
| even for inter species stuff some species have been
| hunted to extinction which is like a dairy farmer killing
| everything instead of planning for multiple generations
| it doesn't make any sense
| card_zero wrote:
| Sure, it's not optimal long-term planning. Evolution
| doesn't plan ahead at all, its only super power in that
| regard is being very slow and gradual. If species A gets
| better and better at eating the abundant species B, and
| this continues for a million years and species A
| specializes and evolves to be unable to eat anything
| else, and the population of A increases to a point where
| B's population suddenly plummets, they _could_ both go
| extinct. But usually A doesn 't get _that_ effective at
| killing B (before the crisis), and what happens is a
| repeating population cycle, the old boom and bust.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_cycle
|
| Weirdly, Olaus Magnus (Big Olaf) was involved in this one
| as well, the same person who did the map in the article.
| thfuran wrote:
| >it seems intuitive that the evolution algorithm would
| prioritize acquiring knowledge for efficient resource
| gathering over killing long term wouldn't it?
|
| By what mechanism do you suppose evolution would
| implement long-term planning?
| card_zero wrote:
| I was thinking (but forgot to say) that hunting is
| usually said to be what drove the evolution of
| intelligence. Humans needed tools, plans, and at least
| the ability to yell words if not grammar, in order to
| kill large tasty animals, that's the usual idea for how
| it happened, more commonly mentioned than intelligence as
| a fitness indicator (aka pure showing off).
| nycdatasci wrote:
| 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.
| card_zero wrote:
| > less viscous world
|
| This would be no land of milk and honey. Maybe just the
| milk.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Killing is the easiest way to get lots of calories and
| building materials. Plants do it, too.
| chefkd wrote:
| I think about this a lot does that explain intra species
| killings? cave person A see sabertooth cave person A dead
| cave person B also see sabertooth cave person B dead cave
| person c gotta kill sabertooth before cave person c dead.
| cave person eat sabertooth like sabertooth eat cave
| person A & B I understand but not cave person A kill cave
| person B cause caveperson different / new its not like
| humans eat humans haha unless you're a wendigo ofc
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Interpunctuation would really help making your comment
| understandable.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Two possible reasons why humans don't eat humans (except
| when we do):
|
| We're hardwired to have empathy for our own kind, e.g.
| the "selfish gene" theory, stronger for kin than for
| strangers but nonetheless strong enough to create an
| almost universal taboo against eating people. Note
| however that many other animals do seem to be wired to
| eat some of their own children:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_cannibalism
|
| "The most dangerous game." People are very resourceful,
| and furthermore have friends and family who hold grudges.
| Eating people is a bad strategy because people who make a
| habit of it tend to get killed for it sooner or later.
| Hunting nearly anything else is safer than hunting other
| humans.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Just to say, that second one also explains why almost no
| other animal likes to eat people either.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Eating one's own species is a fairly complex topic, and
| there are many local optimas. For a detailed read on this
| topic, see "The Red Queen" by Ridley.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Red-Queen-Evolution-Human-
| Nature/dp/0...
| justinclift wrote:
| > A mother's love is unconditional ...
|
| There are _many_ people whose personal experience is
| decidedly not like that, so "citation needed".
| chefkd wrote:
| Haha valid I could tell you stories but trauma comparison
| is not a healthy thing they tell me I don't even speak to
| mine but idk the pain of giving birth should get some
| credit?
|
| I feel like when I was growing up this statement would
| have been accepted as a near tautology perhaps a cultural
| thing? or maybe a testament to the trauma-centric times
| we live in?
| justinclift wrote:
| > ... the pain of giving birth should get some credit?
|
| Sure, up to a point. If the treatment of the children
| later on is massively detrimental though, then that
| "credit" is well and truly expired.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Testament to strong social tabboos that kept poeple quiet
| about their as abusive families.
| fladrif wrote:
| Why is there credit due? It's hard for me to accept the
| fact that children owe their parents for giving birth to
| them. I would say credit is due how the parents treat
| their child afterwards is what matters.
| lupusreal wrote:
| I don't think it's a "sign of the times" thing, I think
| it's an internet thing. If you made that claim outside
| IRL today it would be well received by nearly everybody,
| including people with bad personal experiences (if only
| because most people prefer to believe that good outcomes
| are the norm instead of wallowing in pessimism.)
|
| But the internet? The internet is packed with people who
| focus on the negative, even people who resent their
| mothers (who may love them and treat them well) because
| they're so miserable they wish they had never been born.
|
| Always remember that talking to people online doesn't
| give you a representative sample of what people at large
| are really like. There's a selection bias in play; people
| who have problems with "real life" have a tendency to
| spend more problem online.
| datameta wrote:
| The internet often carries a reverse of a normal
| distribution in terms of sentiment of opinion.
| cess11 wrote:
| 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?
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _Who is the mother in an anthill?_
|
| Except the queen, all the other ants are the daugthers of
| the queen.
|
| IIRC thermites have many "queens" and "kings". I'm not
| sure about social wasps.
| cess11 wrote:
| Right, so the queen lays the eggs, and there her care
| stops. Is she the mother since she made the eggs, or
| would the drones that care for them be the mothers?
| gus_massa wrote:
| The drones are the male ants. They just go away to find a
| new queen and die, while the new queen makes a new
| colony.
|
| The new born ants are feed and cared by their sisters.
| amelius wrote:
| No.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| chefkd wrote:
| hypothesis like this makes me really wish neuroscience
| could model the human brain accurately & completely using
| a mathematical model because it's so vague and Arthur
| Jensen esque vibes maybe once ChatGPT 17 drops haha
| dieselgate wrote:
| 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!
| cjk2 wrote:
| I suspect they are just pissed off with us.
|
| I did a whale watching tour from Husavik 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.
| jajko wrote:
| 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?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| 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.
| slices wrote:
| Very similar experience, it was cool seeing & hearing a whale
| up close, but man that must be annoying for the whale.
| pvaldes wrote:
| 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".
| Y_Y wrote:
| 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.)
| dunekid wrote:
| 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.
| andremendes wrote:
| 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"?
| red_trumpet wrote:
| Yeah weird. If it was done for length-reasons, maybe better
| omit the "long" instead of "before"?
| HPsquared wrote:
| 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.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Whales were so close to becoming the dominant species, but
| Icelanders fortunately stole their industrial technology in
| the last moment.
| xattt wrote:
| 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".
| alephnerd wrote:
| Let's eat grandma
| johnsutor wrote:
| Long industrial technology, Short pre-industrial technology
| bell-cot wrote:
| 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
| tokai wrote:
| But the actual title is not too long at all
| bell-cot wrote:
| "How Viking-Age Hunters Took Down the Biggest Animal on
| Earth" is far more clicky than informative.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Petty I know, but it actually bothers me that they took
| the whales _up_ from the ocean, not "down".
| bell-cot wrote:
| Compared to English-language horrors like the
| right/rite/wright/write homophones, that is a fairly
| minor nitpick.
| tokai wrote:
| Doesn't matter. Its the title.
| xeckr wrote:
| There's a missing comma, OP is telling us to buy stocks in
| companies that are in the business of industrial technology
| datahack wrote:
| Look you can either have AI written articles or train wreck
| titles written by humans. Which one do you want? /s
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Theres also cave painting "evidence" that people were hunting
| Sperm and Humpbacks whales and (to me more impressive) Orcas in
| Korea 8000 years ago:
|
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3638853.stm
| vkou wrote:
| I'd assume that cave orcas were much smaller than regular ones.
| ourmandave wrote:
| 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."
| option wrote:
| I'd say _medieval_ icelanders did everything before _industrial_
| technology
| benced wrote:
| Folks will probably enjoy Matt Lakeman's series on whaling
| https://mattlakeman.org/2021/06/01/everything-you-might-want...
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