[单项选择]

The concern throughout the world in 1968 for those three whales that were locked in the Arctic ice was dramatic proof that whales, several species of which face extinction, have become subjects of considerable sympathy.
These are the recorded voices of whales. These monstrous creatures have been trumpeting their songs, one to another, in the world’s oceans since the dawn of time, while overhead, great empires and civilizations have come and gone. Now, their time of decline has come. It began a long time ago.
Four-thousand-year-old rock carvings show that the people who lived in what is now Norway were probably the first to seek out and kill whales in the sea, By around 890 AD, 3,000 years later, the practice had spread to the Basque people of France and Spain, who hunted whales from boats in the Bay of Biscay. In the centuries that followed, Whaling became an important industry in Denmark, England, Germany, the Netherlands, and, finally, in what would become
A. The Basque people of France and Spain.
B. People in what would become Norway.
C. People from Denmark and the Netherlands.
D. People in what would become America.