PANAMA CITY, PANAMA—Eight percent of the mammal remains found in a 6,000-year-old midden on Pedro González Island, located more than 30 miles from mainland Panama, came from dolphins. People living at the same time in Japan, Mexico, and Chile hunted dolphins, but this is the first time that evidence of systematic dolphin consumption has been found in Central America. “Were the island’s first known inhabitants dolphin hunters or did they merely scavenge beached animals?” asked archaeologist Richard Cooke of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The excavation has not uncovered evidence of nets or spears, but the researchers have found a dolphin skull with a puncture wound inflicted by a blunt-pointed tool. Cooke and his colleagues argue that the residents of Pedro González Island may have waited for the seasonal arrival of dolphins into the Gulf of Panama in their canoes at the entrance to the u-shaped Don Bernardo Beach, then driven them to shore where they were harvested. “I would argue, though it’s speculative, that the retention of dolphin hunting is probably due to an early circum-Pacific maritime adaptation by humans,” Cooke said in a press release. To read more in-depth about archaeology in the region, go to "Pirates of the Original Panama Canal."
Did Panamanian Islanders Hunt Dolphins?
News January 7, 2016
Recommended Articles
Digs & Discoveries July/August 2023
Big Game Hunting
Top 10 Discoveries of 2022 January/February 2023
Neolithic Hunting Shrine
Jibal al-Khashabiyeh, Jordan
Weapons of the Ancient World May/June 2020
Hunting Equipment
Digs & Discoveries July/August 2019
You Say What You Eat
-
Features November/December 2015
Where There's Smoke...
Learning to see the archaeology under our feet
(Vincent Scarano on behalf of Connecticut College) -
Letter From Wales November/December 2015
Hillforts of the Iron Age
Searching for evidence of cultural changes that swept the prehistoric British Isles
(Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales) -
Artifacts November/December 2015
Viking Sword
(Ellen C. Holthe, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo) -
Digs & Discoveries November/December 2015
The Second Americans?
(ShutterStock)