Great Auk - Relationship With Humans

Relationship With Humans

The Great Auk is known to have been preyed upon by Neanderthals more than 100,000 years ago, as evidenced by well-cleaned bones found by their campfires. Images believed to depict the Great Auk were also carved into the walls of the El Pinto Cave in Spain over 35,000 years ago, while cave paintings 20,000 years old have been found in France's Grotte Cosquer.

Native Americans who coexisted with the Great Auk valued it as a food source during the winter and as an important symbol. Images of the Great Auk have been found in bone necklaces. A person buried at the Maritime Archaic site at Port au Choix, Newfoundland, dating to about 2000 BC, was found surrounded by more than 200 Great Auk beaks, which are believed to have been part of a suit made from their skins, with the heads left attached as decoration. Nearly half of the bird bones found in graves at this site were of the Great Auk, suggesting that it had cultural significance for the Maritime Archaic people. The extinct Beothuks of Newfoundland made pudding out of the auk's eggs. The Dorset Eskimos also hunted the species, while the Saqqaq in Greenland overhunted the species, causing a local reduction in range.

Later, European sailors used the auks as a navigational beacon, as the presence of these birds signaled that the Grand Banks of Newfoundland were near.

This species is estimated to have had a maximum population in the millions. The Great Auk was hunted on a significant scale for food, eggs, and its down feathers from at least the 8th century. Prior to that, hunting by local natives can be documented from Late Stone Age Scandinavia and eastern North America, as well as from early 5th century Labrador, where the bird seems to have occurred only as a straggler. Early explorers, including Jacques Cartier and numerous ships attempting to find gold on Baffin Island, were not provisioned with food for the journey home, and therefore used this species as both a convenient food source and bait for fishing. Some of the later vessels anchored next to a colony and ran out planks to the land. The sailors then herded hundreds of these auks onto the ships, where they were then slaughtered. Some authors have questioned whether this hunting method actually occurred successfully. Great Auk eggs were also a valued food source, as the eggs were three times the size of a murre's and had a large yolk. These sailors also introduced rats onto the islands.