Historical Introduction 



T 



HE PRIMITIVE man, clad in coarse wool, who began scratcliing 

 the rocks on Roclcloy (Northern Norway) in about 2200 B.C., could 

 not have known that he was probably the first man in history to 

 depict a Cetacean. All we know of him is that he lived in the Stone Age 

 and that, metal being c[uite unheard of in his day, he must have scratched 

 the rock with a sharp piece of flint. Kis drawing shows a man in a boat, 

 close behind a seal and two porpoises (Fig. i). On the right of the picture 

 there appears an elk which obviously does not fit in with the rest. It is not 

 clear whether the man was hunting the animals, but it seems likely, for 

 coast dwellers have hunted seals and Cetaceans since the earliest times. 



Other drawings discovered on Norwegian rocks portray various species 

 of dolphin, probably animals that were washed ashore, and a drawing 

 from Meling in Rogaland (Fig. 2) clearly depicts the encounter between 

 a whale and four boats. From what is happening to the left of the animal's 

 tail, we may reasonably infer that one of the boats was capsized by a stroke 

 of the whale's tail and that the crew had been thrown overboard. Here, 

 too, it is not clear whether the men were actually hunting the whale, but 

 it is not unlikely if we bear in mind the primitive weapons with which 

 people are still catching large whales to this day. 



Another drawing of a whale, dating from about 1 200 B.C., was discovered 

 near Knossos, on the island of Crete, the site of the famous Palace of 

 Minos. This drawing, however, is no longer pre-historic, since it dates 

 from a time when Mediterranean people had known writing for more 

 than 2,000 years. 



Moreover, bones of whales found in the remnants of settlements of the 

 original inhabitants of Alaska clearly show that the Eskimos caught 

 whales as early as 1500 b.c. 



The ancient Greeks (approximately 2000 b.c.) were well accjuainted 

 with Cetaceans, and many of their vases, coins and buildings were 

 decorated with whale, and particularly with dolphin, motifs. These 



