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Post by brobear on Mar 18, 2017 11:25:42 GMT -5
In all of Europe, for thousands of years - perhaps tens of thousands - before the title of "King of Beasts" was given to the lion on a silver platter by the Church - in roughly the year 1200 AD - the bear ( grizzly ) was the highly acclaimed "King of Beasts."
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 2:50:57 GMT -5
The Grizzly Book by Jack Samson - Hunting the Grizzly Bear by Ned W. Frost. In these days when you hear so much concerning rugged individualism, it is high time that sportsmen should give some consideration to the American Grizzly, Ursus horribilis, with particular emphasis on the subspecies imperator or "Silver Tip" as he is generally called. This animal is the grandest and most rugged individual of them all. Collective security means nothing to him. His ultimatum is: You go your way and I'll go mine," with the added warning "but don't let your way cross mine, for I brook no interference." He is a peaceful, shy individual when left alone, but he can become the most savage, raging beast on earth once he is aroused.
Authorities who are interested in the subject, and who have looked up all possible records and checked all maulings of hunters by dangerous game animals, place him ahead of the African Lion, Water Buffalo, and Seladang, when numbers of hunters and trophies taken are considered. By birthright he is king of the North American animals, and by reason of his unbelievable strength and dominating courage he has maintained his claim to the ruler's throne. Yet the characteristics which have made him stand above other wild animals have also brought about his downfall, because he is considered the finest trophy of a sportsman's collection.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 2:53:45 GMT -5
Here are the words of an early American pioneer: Man Meets Grizzly by Young and Beyers' "They talk of bears," said Preston, fixed upon mine, with still regard, his large gray eyes; "of bears in Arkansas. I was bred to the bear as well as to the 'bar', and through ten seasons hunted on the Red River with men of the woods, 'bar' hunters of the border, who have all the forest wisdom. I have read, too, what has been written by the great hunters, but none of them knew the bear of California. He is the sovereign of beasts; in strength, weight, endurance, and sagacity superior to the lion, and I doubt not has formerly destroyed some great and powerful tribe of lions on this continent."
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:14:38 GMT -5
www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674047822 The oldest discovered statue, fashioned some fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, is of a bear. The lion was not always king. From antiquity to the Middle Ages, the bear’s centrality in cults and mythologies left traces in European languages, literatures, and legends from the Slavic East to Celtic Britain. Historian Michel Pastoureau considers how this once venerated creature was deposed by the advent of Christianity and continued to sink lower in the symbolic bestiary before rising again in Pyrrhic triumph as a popular toy. The early Church was threatened by pagan legends of the bear’s power, among them a widespread belief that male bears were sexually attracted to women and would violate them, producing half-bear, half-human beings—invincible warriors who founded royal lines. Marked for death by the clergy, bears were massacred. During the Renaissance, the demonic prestige bears had been assigned in biblical allegory was lost to the goat, ass, bat, and owl, who were the devil’s new familiars, while the lion was crowned as the symbol of nobility. Once the undefeated champion of the Roman arena, prized in princely menageries, bears became entertainers in the marketplace, trained to perform humiliating tricks or muzzled and devoured by packs of dogs for the amusement of humans. By the early twentieth century, however, the bear would return from exile, making its way into the hearts of children everywhere as the teddy bear. This compelling history reminds us that men and bears have always been inseparable, united by a kinship that gradually moved from nature to culture—a bond that continues to this day.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:16:20 GMT -5
THE BEAR - History of a Fallen King - by Michel Pastoureau. Was Charlemagne the greatest enemy to the bear that Europe ever knew? On two occasions in Germany the massacres took on a systematic character, in 773 and 785, both times after victorious campaigns against the Saxons. The future emperor of course, never killed a bear with his own hands, even though he was, according to the chroniclers, a formidable huntsman, but soldiers acting on his orders conducted very large battles in the forests of Saxony and Thuringia.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:17:27 GMT -5
Continued.... The bear's enemies were not in fact so much Charlemagne and his troops as the prelates and clergy around them. The Church had declared war on the strongest animal on European soil and was determined to exterminate it, at least on German territory. There was a particular reason for this: In all of Saxony and the neighboring regions in the eighth century, the bear was sometimes venerated as a god, which gave rise to forms of worship that were sometimes frenetic or demonic, particularly among warriors. Bears had to be absolutely eradicated to convert these barbarians to the religion of Christ. While modern historians have written extensively about the worship of trees and springs, they have had much less to say about bear worship, as though it had been negligible or confined to certain tribes. But this was not the case. As chronicles and capitularies clearly attest, bear worship was widespread in both Germany and Scandinavia. It was denounced early on by several missionaries who had ventured well beyond the Rhine. In 742, for example, Saint Boniface, on a mission to Saxony, wrote a long letter to his friend Daniel, Bishop of Winchester, in which he mentioned among the "appalling rituals of the pagans" the practice of disguising oneself as a bear and drinking the animals blood before going into battle. Thirty years later, in an official list prepared by prelates of the pagans superstitions of the Saxons to be combatted, the same practices were again denounced, along with others that were even more barbaric.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:18:15 GMT -5
Continued.... These customs were nothing new. From time immemorial the bear had been a particularly admired creature throughout the Germanic world. Stronger than any animal, it was the king of the forest and of all the animals. Warriors sought to imitate it and to imbue themselves with its powers through particularly savage rituals. Clan chiefs and kings adopted the bear as their primary symbol and attempted to seize hold of its powers through the use of weapons and emblems.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:18:50 GMT -5
Continued.... But the Germans' veneration for the bear did not stop there. In their eyes, it was not only an invincible animal and the incarnation of brute strength; it was also a being apart, an intermediary creature between the animal and human worlds, and even an ancestor relative of humans. As such, many beliefs collected around the bear and it was subject to several taboos, particularly with respect to its name. In addition, the male bear was supposed to be attracted by young women and feel sexual desire for them: it often sought them out, sometimes carried them off and raped them, whereupon the women gave birth to creatures that were half man and half bear, who were always indomitable warriors and even the foundeers of prestigious family lines. The border between human and animal was in this instance much more uncertain than the one described by monotheistic religions.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:19:31 GMT -5
Continued.... In the eyes of the Church, all of this was absolutely horrifying, all the more because worship of the great beast of the forest was not confined to the Germanic world. It was also found among Slavs and to a lesser extent among Celts. The Celts, of course, had been Christianized for several centuries, and their old animal cults had gradually adopted discreet forms, surviving primarily in poetry and oral tradition. But this was not true of the Slavs, and they admired the bear as much as the Germans did. Indeed, in a large part of non-Mediterranean Europe in the Carolingian period, the bear continued to be seen as a divine figure, an ancestral god whose worship took on various forms but remained solidly rooted, impeding the conversion of pagan peoples. Almost everywhere, from the Alps to the Baltic, the bear stood as a rival to Christ. The Church thought it appropriate to declare war on the bear, to fight him by all means possible, and to bring him down from his throne and his altars.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:20:12 GMT -5
Continued.... historian Michel Pastoureau taking about his book... The subject of this history is an animal - not an individual animal but a species, the brown bear - studied over time in its relations with the societies in Europe that approached, feared, confronted, thought about, or dramatized it. A wild animal as the subject of a work of history is not common. Historians usually direct their investigations and reflections toward men, territories, and periods, as well as toward the events and challenges facing them. Until recently, historians had barely considered animals, leaving them to collections of anecdotes and curious tales, as they had the habit of doing with every subject thought frivolous or marginal. Only a few historians of religion had been interested in one or another specific issue that might involve the study of an animal. But devoting a thesis or a scholarly book to an animal was really unthinkable.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:20:52 GMT -5
Continued.... This history of the bear in relation to humankind is limited to Europe. It would hardly have been reasonable to extend it to other continents. To be able to describe clearly the place of an animal in any given society, one has to know the various characteristics, social structures, and forms of behavior of that society. One scholar may be able to do that for one or two societies, perhaps seen over a long period of time, but it is impossible on a planetary scale. Finally, in addition to being limited to Europe, this study concerns only the brown bear. This was indeed for centuries the only species known to the various societies under consideration.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:21:31 GMT -5
Continued.... The oldest trace of the symbolic ties between man and bear seems to date from approximately 80,000 years ago in Perigord, in the cave of Regourdou, where a Neanderthal grave is connected to the grave of a brown bear under a single slab between two blocks of stone, thereby indicating the special status of the animal. We have preserved no certain trace, either archeological or anthropological, of the animal's prior relations with the Neanderthals; we can only try to imagine them on the basis of a few collections of skulls and bones in alpine caves, and venture the hypothesis that the bear may have already have been seen in the Middle Paleolithic as an animal apart. However, there is no evidence to establish that these collections were deposited by men. Beginning with the Upper Paleolithic, approximately 30,000 years ago, evidence becomes more plentiful and solid, showing how in some regions and in certain periods men and bears inhabited the same territories, frequented the same caves, hunted the same prey, struggled against the same dangers, and probably had both economic and symbolic relations with one another. For that period, everything seems to confirm that the bear was no longer considered an animal like other animals, that it occupied a special place between the worlds of beasts and men, and that it may have served as a mediator with the beyond. Does this mean that it is legitimate to say there was a prehistoric cult of the bear, practiced in several regions of the northern hemisphere in the Paleolithic period? The question provoked, and continues to provoke, passionate controversy among prehistorians.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:27:52 GMT -5
Continued.... According to current science, the cave bear ( Ursus spelaeus ) was not the direct ancestor of the brown bear ( Ursus arctos ), the subject of this book. But they may have had a common ancestor, the Ursus etruscus, which became extinct during the Pliocene, and both were abundant in the environment of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man. What was discovered in the cave of Regourdou was certainly the grave of a brown bear, but the images that appear in wall art and in portable art ( figurines and the like ) during the Upper Paleolithic from 35,000 BC primarily of cave bears. There are observable differences between the two animals, notably in size: the cave bear was significantly larger ( up to eleven-and-a-half feet for an upright male ), more massive, and heavier ( 1,100 to 1,300 pounds )than the brown bear, who grew to nearly seven to seven-and-a-half feet and weighed between 550 and 660 pounds. Its dentition was also different; the cave bear had molars with large chewing surfaces, suggesting a more vegetarian diet than that of its cousin. Finally - and this can be clearly seen in cave paintings - the form of the head is different in the two animals: the cave bear had a prominent frontal lump and a clear demarcation between forehead and snout, two traits much less marked in the brown bear. Until about 20,000 BC the brown bear was depicted less often than the cave bear, perhaps because it did not hibernate in the caves. The cave bear hibernated every winter and left many traces behind. But for unknown reasons, it disappeared relatively early, between 15,000 and 12,000 BC.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:28:29 GMT -5
Continued.... Images of bears - engraved or painted, sometimes engraved and painted - are found in only one-tenth of the approximately three hundred known decorated European Paleolithic caves. Sometimes they are the central subject of a scene, sometimes they appear in a chamber or cavity reserved for them, and sometimes it is legitimate to wonder about the presence of a single image of a bear - discreet, and apparently of little significance - really play a less important role than the surrounding animals, or is it rather highlighted by its singleness? The question is worth asking. In portable art, on the other hand, the bear is usually represented alone, engraved on a block of schist, on a fragment of bone, antler, or ivory, sometimes sculpted in stone or modeled in clay.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:29:06 GMT -5
Continued.... In both wall art and portable art, in any event, the bear is represented in a greater variety of postures than any other animal. In is well known that in historical times, the simplifications of forms in the representation of an animal is generally proportional to the place the animal occupies in the world of symbols. Was this already the case in the Paleolithic? The bear, finally, is the only animal represented full face in clay modeling ( bringing together full-face and profile views ) as well as in painting and engraving. Finally and above all, the bear is, except for man, the only living creature that is shown upright, standing on its hind legs. All these characteristics are remarkable and unquestionably contribute to giving this animal a special status.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:29:44 GMT -5
Continued.... "Cavemen" never really lived in caves whose walls they decorated. They were disturbing, inhospitable places, always difficult to get into: the ceilings were low, the floor slippery, and the dangers numerous. In addition, they were perpetually cold, humid, and dark. Painting or engraving in the depths of a cave was a voluntary act based on precise intentions, and it required that all sorts of fears be overcome. Immune to fear and danger, bears regularly frequented caves over dozens of millennia: the brown bear in summer, for coolness and rest; the cave bear in winter, for hibernation and the birth and early care of its young. Caves have preserved abundant evidence of these frequent visits: paw prints in the clay of floor and wall; traces of fur where a bear scratched itself or marked the walls with its odor; even bits of fur trapped in clay; scratches of all kinds on walls and floors; remains of dens used over many generations.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:30:14 GMT -5
Continued.... Artists sometimes integrated these traces and imprints into their paintings and carvings; in certain sites, there is thus a clear link between the physical presence of bears and the images representing them. It is possible that some caves or parts of caves were so strongly impregnated with the odor of bears that in a way it cast a spell over men who ventured into them and impelled them to depict the huge animal that was simultaneously feared, admired, and perhaps worshiped.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:30:57 GMT -5
Continued.... Many caves, in fact, saw the successive and alternating presence of bears and men over the very long term. But what these caves contain in the greatest abundance are neither painted or carved images nor simple imprints of paws and claws, but thousands of bones. Their large number, their accumulation in certain places, their methodical arrangement in some others all raise the question of their origin. Were these natural "deposits" from corpses of bears who died during hibernation? Were they bear "cemeteries," purely accidental or deliberately chosen by the bears themselves, or conceived by men? Or finally, were they veritable sanctuaries where ritual ceremonies were performed in which the bear played a major role? Prehistorians have been debating these questions for three or four generations and seem nowhere near to putting an end to their controversies.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:31:23 GMT -5
Continued.... Bears were, of course, not the only animals that frequented caves, but they did so more often and, significantly, in larger numbers than the others. In the oldest sites, 80 to 90 percent of the bones found belong to bears, and in some cases the figure reaches 100 percent. Two such examples are Cueva Eiros in Spain and Dijve Babe in Slovenia, where, in addition, the quantity of bones and bone fragments is considerable. Even larger quantities of bone and bone fragments are located in the cave of La Balme-a-Collomb at the foot of Mount Granier in the Massif de la Chartreuse in France. In 1988, skeletal remains were found there probably belonging to several thousand Ursidae. The site has not yet been completely inventoried, but it is possible that this number will exceed three or four thousand. Carbon 14 dating has established that bears frequented this cave over a period of more than twenty thousand years, from 45,000 to 24,000 BC.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 5:31:58 GMT -5
Continued.... Even more than bones and fragments of bones, skulls were subject to particular treatment: deliberately covered with a mound of clay; skulls artistically piled in stone hollows; skulls set in fissures or cavities sealed by dry stones forming sorts of chests or tabernacles; skulls with the lower jaw removed and run through with a femur, a tibia, or a penis "bone"; skulls arranged in a circle or semicircle on the floor around a larger skull; skulls set in the center of a chamber on a rocky promontory forming something like an altar. Most of these arrangements seem to be clearly ritual in nature and encourage researchers to describe them using terms borrowed from liturgical vocabulary. In every case they encourage looking at the bear as a creature apart, intermediary between the world of animals and the world of the gods. Indeed, one encounters similar evidence for no other animal.
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