A stretch of the northern shore on remote Yttygran Island, 82km off the coast of Alaska, has become a macabre tourist destination. Massive whale jawbones, ribs and vertebrae stand horizontal in the ground forming an eerie alleyway. It’s generally agreed that the site dates back to the fourteenth or fifteenth century, but whether it was a sacred spot for native tribes to meet or simply a gathering place for mass slaughter, no one knows. What we do know is that it stands as one of the weirdest places in the world.Discovered by Soviet archaeologists in 1977, this monument to ancient Eskimo culture would be a very good setting for a fantasy movie.
The alley is just huge: it runs up along the coastline for about 500 m, and it has a complicated structure. The closest row to the shore is made of whale skulls embedded to the ground. Each of them is more than 2 m large, and they protrude 1.5 m above the earth. The next row is made of jawbone pillars. They rise to a height of almost 5 m above the ground, while the length of the underground part is about 0.5 m. Each pillar has a diameter of 0.5 meter.
The mass of such a jaw bone is 250–300 kg. It would require several grown men to put place it into the ground.
The Whale Bone Alley originally consisted of 50–60 skulls, 30 jaws, and hundreds of purposefully laid stones.
Between the rows of skulls and bones, there are about 150 meat storage pits (and in some of them, you can still find the remnants of food) and ring-shaped stone structures.
A 50 m stone road passes from the meat pits along the hillside, leading to a flat round platform. In the middle, there is a huge flat boulder and a stone hearth bearing traces of ash.
Archeologists believe that the Whale Bone Alley was constructed by a predetermined plan, as it forms a regular geometrical pattern.
The skulls are placed in groups of two and four. They are dug into the earth nose first, so that the massive occipital area would protrude from the ground. At the same time, archaeologists have found very few ribs or vertebrae on the island, which means it was not the place where the whales were slaughtered. Some skulls have holes in them. According to some scientists, the skulls could have been transported to Yttygran after being stripped of flesh.
