A new genetic study of modern and ancient herring bones suggests humans have been trading the fish across long distances since Viking times—and we’ve been overfishing them for nearly as long.
Fatty and abundant, herring have fed humans for centuries—and perhaps even longer than that.
Herring—a silvery, rolling pin–size fish—have been prominent across the globe for so long that many places regard them as a cultural icon. They are easy to catch, as they assemble into schools many millions strong to spawn. In the Baltic, Atlantic herring “supported one of the most important trades in medieval Europe,” fueling the rise of Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and other cities, says James Barrett, an archaeologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
By combining these modern genomes with already published herring genomes from 22 other places, the researchers had fish DNA from throughout the Baltic Sea. “The scale and range of data of this study is very impressive,” says Iain McKechnie, an archaeologist at the University of Victoria who has studied the historical use of herring in the U.S. Pacific Northwest but who was not involved with the work.
The researchers then compared modern and ancient genomes to determine which group dominated at each archaeological siteBones at the oldest site, Truso in Poland—dated to between 800 C.E. and 850 C.E. during the age of the Vikings—correspond to fall spawnersHerring spoils quickly if not salted or cured, so fish sales need to be big enough to make processing and transporting the fish worth it, Atmore explains.Finding herring that have been traded long distance as early as 800 to 850 C.E.
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