SEA-BIRD NUMBERS AND MAN 



65 



Fig. 12 



Upper Palaeolithic (probably Magdalenian) rock-engraving at El Pendo, 



near Santander, North Spain, showing what are probably great auks 



of which modern sketch on left. 



(After H. Breuil, 1911; G. Clark, 1948) 



one, of a kind, ever since he has been Man — even before; for there 

 is ample evidence that during the second of the two advances of 

 the ice in the second of the two glaciations of the Great Ice Age, some 

 of the latest members of the species Homo neanderthalensis ate great 

 auks. This was about twenty thousand years ago; the Neanderthals 

 left their auk bones in the cave of St. Brelade in Jersey and in the 

 Devil's Tower at Gibraltar. Their successors, the first of Homo sapiens, 

 Men of the Aurignacian age (the early part of the Upper Old Stone 

 Age, <7. 1 6,000 to C.I 1,000 B.C.), were of two main races, the tall short- 

 faced Cro-Magnons, and the shorter Grimaldians, perhaps closely 

 related to African bushmen (W. J. Sollas, 1924). Great auk bones 

 have been found in Grimaldian deposits in the Grotta Romanelli 

 in the heel of Italy* and in another cave whose habitation goes back 

 to the end of the Old Stone Age, El Pendo in north Spain, a wall- 

 etching (Fig. 12, above) of Magdalenian age (c.8,ooo B.C.) may 

 represent a great auk (H. Breuil and others, 191 1; G. Clark> 1948). 



*It is of interest to point out that the modern razorbill, the great auk's nearest 

 relation, which had a similar breeding-distribution, penetrates into the Mediterranean 

 as far as this in winter. 

 D 



