Humankind is confronted with an enormous and perplexing
riddle. We’ve developed a way of life
that is ecologically super-idiotic (but look at our awesome phones!), and
pounding the vitality of the natural world (and soon we’ll have self-driving
cars!). The great riddle is how did we
get into this mess? Can we get out of
it? Who are we? Where did we come from?
Many books reveal important clues. Bonobo
described our closest living relatives, a species that has remained sustainable
for millions of years. The
Art of Tracking revealed our ancient roots as bipedal hunters and
scavengers, which kept our ancestors alive for several million years. Hunters
of the Recent Past examined the communal hunting practiced by Homo sapiens who
struggled to adapt to living in temperate and subarctic climates, during the
last 15,000 years or so.
Now, I want to peek at life from 40,000 to 20,000 years
ago. This peek looks at the Homo sapiens who had
recently moved into Europe — the ancestors of many white skinned folks who are
reading my words in English. In those
days, Europe enjoyed an astonishing abundance of wildlife. Peek at the fantastic cave paintings of Chauvet or Lascaux.
For my tropical primate ancestors to survive in a challenging
non-tropical climate, they had to live like moon explorers, with weatherproof
shelters, warm clothing, blazing hearths, and a well-stocked food locker for
the deep freeze months. The giant
hyenas, cave bears, cave lions, and saber-tooth cats refused to join PETA, and
took great delight in brutally killing the delicious primates in fur coats. Eventually, groups that were clever and lucky
figured out ways to exist for a while, riding a scary climate change roller
coaster.
Roche de Solutré
At the Roche de Solutré site, near Mâcon, France,
archaeologists have found the remains of up to 100,000 horses. Prior to 1866, when experts realized the
bones were prehistoric, local farmers had been hauling them away for many
years, using them for fertilizer. In
some places, the surface of the ground was paved with ancient horse bones. The valley was a common route for the
migrations of animal herds. In the summer months,
herds grazed at higher elevations to avoid heat and insects. Winter months were spent grazing on the
warmer floodplain of the Saône River.
The bone beds were located fairly close to the bottom of a
steep limestone cliff. For years, folks
theorized that the horses had been killed by driving them over the edge. At this site, a more likely scenario was that
hunters drove the animals into natural rock corrals, or box canyons, where they
were trapped. Once cut off from escape,
they were killed, butchered, dried, and smoked.
Wild horses were extremely dangerous prey. Big strong stallions would aggressively
attack hunters, and stomp them to bloody bits.
The oldest bones are 55,000 years old, horses killed by
Neanderthals. They were covered by six
feet (1.8 m) of sterile soil. The next
layer is deep, containing the remains of animals killed by Homo sapiens between
37,000 and 10,000 years ago. Prior to
22,000 years ago, the majority of bones were horses. After that, reindeer bones were dominant. This was an era of climate shifts.
Předmostí
Předmostí is near the city of Přerov, in the Czech
Republic. It is located at the southern
end of the Moravian Gate, a narrow corridor that passes between the Carpathian
Mountains to the east, and the Sudeten range in the west, linking southern
Poland and Moravia. It has long been a
strategic trade and communications route.
Naturally, it was also a route for the seasonal migrations of game
animals in the Pleistocene, including mammoths.
Předmostí has the largest mammoth bone accumulations in central
Europe. The skeletons of more than a
thousand have been uncovered so far. Mammoth
bones were used in the construction of their huts. Excavations have found hearths, a cemetery,
stone and bone tools, and carvings made from mammoth ivory. One carving has been named the Venus of Předmostí.
Folks inhabited Předmostí between 27,000 and 25,000 years
ago, and again later, about 20,000 years ago.
During this time period, at many locations in central Europe, numerous
Venus figurines have been found. HERE are some
examples. The figurines inspired
archaeologist Marija Gimbutas to imagine a paradise of goddess worshipping
people that preceded the dark arrival of patriarchy and bloody warfare… a
pleasant dream.
Dolní Věstonice
Dolní Věstonice and Pavlov are small neighboring villages north
of Mikulov, in the Czech Republic. In
the twentieth century, when a villager decided to dig a cellar, he discovered
the remains of a large dwelling built with mammoth bones and tusks. Multiple excavation sites in these villages
have revealed fascinating details about Pleistocene hunters, who lived there
from 29,000 to 24,500 years ago. They
lived on terraces overlooking the river, where they had an excellent view of
the vast treeless steppe below. These
huts were common in central Europe. HERE
is a map of them, and HERE
are many images of mammoth bone huts.
At one camp, four huts were located close together, and the
small settlement was surrounded by a low wall made of mammoth bones and rocks,
covered with brush and turf. The huts were
something like teepees, covered with animal skins. They had a circular foundation made of rocks
and heavy bones. Between the huts was a
large outdoor fire pit. Up the hill was
a small hut containing a kiln for baking clay.
This is the earliest evidence of making ceramics (they did not make
pottery). They created a variety of
figurines, including the heads of bears, foxes, and lions, and female figurines
with bulging breasts and buttocks. These
may be the earliest art.
At a nearby location, the largest lodge was 50 feet long (15
m) by 20 feet wide (7 m), and had five hearths.
At one hearth, two long mammoth bones were stuck in the ground, to
support a roasting spit. Southeast of
the lodge were piles of bones, including about 100 mammoths, mostly young. There were also bones of horses, reindeer,
hares, wolves, and foxes. At one dig, they
found the remains of a child wearing a necklace with 27 fox teeth. The skull was covered with red ochre, and the
body was covered with the shoulder blades of mammoths.
Artists have studied the skulls found in the area, and made
paintings of what the people would have looked like in life. When exhibited in Prague, the portrait of a prehistoric
wild woman embarrassed the public — because she looked too modern, not like a
dirty primitive beast — she looked like the proper and dignified ladies in the
gallery (gulp!). Many awesome paintings
can be found HERE.
Great Leap Forward
The sites mentioned above existed prior to the Last Glacial
Maximum (20,000 to 15,000 years ago), an era of intense cold that froze out
many species of flora and fauna. Some
human supremacists see these mammoth hunters as a glorious breakthrough in the
human saga, when we finally ceased being ordinary animals — dumb brutes unable
to sing, speak, reason, make ornaments, paint caves, invent deities, or become
entranced by smart phones. They call this
transition the Great Leap Forward — a miraculous advance as important as the
Industrial Revolution. (Of course, this
could only take place in Europe, home of the most brilliant humans of all.)
The Pleistocene epoch spanned from 2.6 million years ago, to
11,700 years ago, and it included many intense ice ages. At the end of the Pleistocene, there was a
surge of extinctions; a large number of megafauna species vanished in North
America, mostly between 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. Some experts blame humans for overhunting,
others blame climate change, and many blame a combination.
In Europe, fewer extinctions occurred, and they took place
over a longer period of time. Many of the
species that went extinct were giant-sized, compared to their modern
relatives. Cave bears and European
hippos vanished around 24,000 years ago — both species had been around for over
a million years. Homotherium, a
genus of saber-tooth cats, existed for five million years before vanishing
28,000 years ago. European cave lions
vanished 10,000 years ago, after 1.9 million years. Cave hyenas were gone by 11,000 years ago,
after 3.5 million years. Irish elk were
gone by 8,000 years ago, after 400,000 years in Europe. Woolly mammoths were gone by 14,000 years
ago, after 400,000 years. Woolly
rhinoceros vanished 10,000 years ago, after 3.6 million years in Eurasia.
Was the Great Leap Forward a great booboo? Did overhunting encourage the emergence of
agriculture and civilization? Should we
have stayed in tropical Africa, and skipped our nightmarish experiment in
technological innovation? Why don’t
bonobos need psych meds? Good luck with
the riddle! Have a nice day!
Fagan, Brian, Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First
Modern Humans, Bloomsbury Press, New York, 2010.
Kurtén, Björn, Pleistocene
Mammals of Europe, Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago, 1968.
Svoboda, Jiri, and Vojen Lozek, Hunters Between East and West: The Paleolithic of
Moravia, Springer Science, New York, 1996.
Stringer, Chris, Lone
Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth, Times Books,
New York, 2012.
Ward, Peter D., The
Call of Distant Mammoths, Copernicus, New York, 1997.
HERE are
paintings of life in central Europe from 20,000 to 12,500 years ago.
HERE is a
large collection of photos and random notes describing the Kostenki sites along
the Don River in Russia. Kostenki is
notable for the mammoth bone huts found there.
HERE is a
large collection of interesting photos, maps, and random notes describing the Dolní
Věstonice and Pavlov sites in the Czech Republic.
