Archaeologists and scientists have said that 1,000 years ago cod was traded extraordinary distances across Europe, from the Norwegian Arctic to England and the Baltic. Vikings in New York were eating cod caught off the Norwegian coast. According to the scientists analyzing cod bones reveal that it was originally developed to track modern fish stocks. It analyses collagen, which carries chemical traces of the water the fish originally swam in.
Analysis of the bones from archaeological sites shows a picture of fish transported remarkable distances from AD950 on, when the quantity of bones shows a huge rise in consumption. The research team was led by archaeologists at Cambridge University. They say that when fish were chopped up for processing, matching the results from fish bones and heads shows that in some cases they are separated by thousands of miles.
The current issue of Journal of Archaeological Science contains the research report which shows that the 1,000-year-old origins of the modern problem of declining fish stocks, as fishing grounds had to supply far more than a local market. James Barrett, of Cambridge University’s archaeological department, told that the advent of commercial fishing may represent the point at which people started to have an impact on marine ecoystems.
