Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/246

218 (Physeter tursio), in which the large head and the position of the pectoral and dorsal fins are very well indicated. The seals were probably stalked, and the whale was caught on the nearest coast in the Bay of Biscay. We can realise the scene of gluttony which followed the slaughter of whales from the behaviour of the Eskimos under similar circumstances. 83.—Whale incised on piece of Antler, Laugerie Basse,.

The absence of the remains of seals and whales from the refuse-heaps now within a short distance of the sea is due to the fact that in the late Pleistocene age the Atlantic seaboard was situated far to the west of its present position (see Maps, Figs. 24, 32). The refuse-heaps accumulated near the ancient shore are now submerged between the one hundred fathom line and the present coast. There, in all probability, they consisted of as large a percentage of seals, whales, and walruses, as those of the littoral Eskimos of the present day. The hunters who engraved these marine animals carried their sketches along with them in their migration inland, in the one case as far as Oloron, and in the other into Auvergne.

The Cave-men were expert fowlers, as is shown by the many kinds of birds identified by Professor Alfonse Milne-Edwards, from the refuse-heaps of Central and