Dear Journal, remind me to put a better disclaimer on potentially off-putting news items. Apparently the last toe-fry tale squicked a good half-dozen people. Sorry!
I just found out that The B-52s were at Calder race track on Sunday! Aww.. I’d have enjoyed seeing them. I wonder if they have a new album out?
Hooked up with a gmail account yesterday…I’ll be interested in seeing how long it stays spam-free. A gig of storage is nice… (work’s config for all users there is only 300 meg for the whole squad) makes file-tranning CD ISOs possible, if nothing else. My first test was a nice fat file of the Monkey vs Robot. (This won’t be my primary email, but it’s a nice backup. What’s next? Google-IM?
Rock art hints at whaling origins
Capture of a whale, showing a boat carrying whalers (left of the whale) and a float (on the right)
Stone Age people may have started hunting whales as early as 6,000 BC, new evidence from South Korea suggests.
Analysis of rock carvings at Bangu-Dae archaeological site in Ulsan in the southeast of the country revealed more than 46 depictions of large whales.
They also show evidence that humans used harpoons, floats and lines to catch their prey, which included sperm whales, right whales and humpbacks.
Details of the research are published in the journal L’Anthropologie.
“You have representations of dolphins and whales, with people on boats using harpoons and lines. It is a scene of whaling,” co-investigator Daniel Robineau told BBC News Online.
For example, one scene shows people standing in a curved boat connected via a line to a whale.
Social importance
The rock engravings, or petroglyphs, seem to have been made at a range of different times between 6,000 and 1,000 BC.
At nearby occupation sites dating to between 5,000 and 1,500 BC, archaeologists have unearthed large quantities of cetacean bones – a sure sign that whales were an important food source for populations in the area.
Other species represented on the rocks at Bangu-Dae include orcas (killer whales), minke whales, and dolphins.
Dr Robineau and Sang-Mog Lee, of the Museum of Kyungpook National University in Bukgu Daegu in South Korea, suggest whaling played an important role in social cohesion in the lives of the people who made the petroglyphs, similar to that which has been observed in historic Inuit populations.
Some of the depictions of whales also bear what appear to be fleshing lines, where the hunters divided up the meat after capturing and killing the mammals. 
I can’t help but wonder if it was a historical thing, or if they were just telling sotries of hunting the great beasts. Somehow, going out in a rowboat and trying to kill something as big as a whale seems totally crazy…not something any rational person would do. (Of course if you’ve got a hungry village, you’ll do a lot of crazy things.)
