Cult of the Cave Bear

[brobear]

The experts are divided on this topic. Not surprising. Paleotologists and Archaeologists seldom all agree on anything. 
There is some strong evidence, though no real proof, that Pleistocene mankind in Europe worshipped or gave special reverence to bears ( both the cave bear and the brown bear ). 

www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-cult-of-the-cave-bear/ 
 

Many of the myths that plague archaeologists come from outside the profession, the product of overly imaginative minds untrained in the scientific study of the past and unfamiliar with the archaeological evidence. There are, however, a few very popular and widely believed myths about the past that come out of the discipline of archaeology itself and that are based on evidence collected and interpreted by professionals.



It is a part of the process of science that ideas arise, are later recognized as mistaken, and are dropped. However, when an idea is so spectacular or so romantic that it escapes from the dry pages of scientific journals and catches the public imagination; when it becomes firmly entrenched there; and when it continues to color people’s ideas about the past long after it has been proven groundless—then it begins to take on the aspect of other legends like those of Atlantis or of the peopling of the Americas by the Lost Tribes of Israel.



The Cult of the Cave Bear is such a myth. The idea that Neanderthals (Fig. 1), the predecessors of modern humans in Europe, were engaging regularly in religious rituals involving the sacrifice or the worship of the now extinct cave bear appears to have been suggested separately by at least two excavators of cave bear dens early in the I920s. By 1975, a detailed analysis debunking all the evidence for such a cult had appeared in print. Yet since that time, best-selling novels, major Holly­wood movies, and even college textbooks have portrayed the Cult of the Cave Bear as not only to have been found. Why the evidence is no longer to be taken as proving the existence of such a cult can be understood by examining the same evidence in the light of new methods and knowledge. Why the notion continues to be popular is harder to understand. 
 

[brobear]

The Dragon’s Cave

In the years between 1917 and 1921, in a deep cave high above the Tamina Valley in Switzerland, Dr. Emil Bächler uncovered a series of spectacular finds. The sediments that filled the cave of Drachenloch (“Dragon’s Cave”) had been laid down during the Ice Ages, when both cave bears and Neanderthals flourished in Europe. What he found led Bächler to conclude that relationships between the two species had been more than casual.

The dirt and rock debris that filled the cave was full of bear bones. This in itself was not surprising, since cave bears used caves for hibernation (hence the scientific name Ursus spelaeus or “cave bear”) and, over centuries of such occupation, died in large enough numbers to leave abundant bones to be found by future excavators. But some of the deposits of bear bones found by Bächler’s workmen appeared to be far from natural. In two of the interior chambers were low mortarless stone walls, up to about 10 inches high, located 15 to 25 inches from the bedrock walls of the cave. Such constructions were in themselves remarkable, for elsewhere the only stone structures attributable to Neanderthals are extremely crude, consisting of irregular circles of rocks that were probably used to weight the bases of tents or windbreaks. In Drachenloch, however, not only were there walls, but behind these walls were found accumulations of bear bones — the long bones of the legs and more or less complete skulls. The pattern was very consistent. Where such walls were present, bones were present. Where they were absent, bones were rare along the cave walls.

Other finds at Drachenloch were even more spectacular. Bächler found “about six” carefully made dry masonry chests, or cists, full of bear bones. One of these in particular has become famous. It was about three feet high and covered with a large limestone slab. Inside it were a group of cave bear skulls, all carefully aligned in the same direction. While workmen destroyed the chest before it could be photographed, Bächler published a sketch of it, drawn in cross-section some time after the excavation (Fig. 3). Many of the bones in these satisfyingly romantic but true as well.

How the myth came into being can easily be understood if we look at the most famous of the sites where ritual remains were thought cists exhibited the toothmarks of large carnivores, indicating that they had little or no meat on them at the time they were deposited. For this reason, it is unlikely that they represented caches of meat made by Neanderthal hunters. At the same time, the construction of the cists and their protection by stone slabs made it seem unlikely that the bones were deposited naturally.

Bächler also found a bear skull in another part of the cave, lying upright between two shinbones, with the thighbone of a bear thrust through the gap between the cheekbone and the skull (Fig. 4). Because the thighbone had to be twisted ninety degrees to get it through the opening, it seemed unlikely that it got there by accident. Elsewhere were other skulls, in niches between rocks, covered by slabs, sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal, all of them apparently put in place by Neanderthals.

Because these cave bear deposits seemed to have no practical function, and because of their rather spectacular nature, they were taken by Bächler to be ritual deposits. The idea of cave bears as the objects of ancient Neanderthal rituals immediately became a part of the scientific view of Neanerthals (Fig. 5). And the notion of the Cult of the Cave Bear found support at other sites, where similar, although usually less spectacular, finds were excavated both in the same decade and in the decades since.

[brobear]

Archaeological Problems

The idea of a cave bear cult had its detractors, however, from the beginning. One such was the French prehistorian Dr. F. E. Koby, whose objections were quite clearly voiced. In fact, one reason his arguments were not more widely accepted may well have been that they were so strongly stated. Of a scientific group that had reported evidence of cavebear worship at a site in Austria, Koby wrote:

One may hope that they will acquire some experience and an ounce of common sense. The article in Natur and Technik is of some interest from the psychological point of view, allowing one to infer a certain collective suggestibility and constituting an interesting contribution [to our knowledge) concerning the formation of legends. (1951:9)

While such eminent prehistorians as the Frenchman Andre Leroi-Gourhan argued against the existence of the cave bear cult, it was not until a young paleontologist and archaeologist named Jean-Pierre Jéquier made a detailed case-by-case study of all the re­ported evidence that it became clear that in no case was the evidence sufficient to prove the existence of such a cult. Basically, Jéquier pointed out that there were two problems with the arguments and evidence presented in favor of the cult. The first had to do with the way in which the data were collected and reported. The second had to do with what people had learned since Bächler’s time about the way in which caves are filled, and the effects that these processes have on materials in the caves. A look at Drachenloch and one or two other cases will show how what Koby called legends” can arise from within the field of scientific research.

[brobear]

The Bear - www.donsmaps.com/bear.html

The bear possesses a soul just as the human being does. The Orochi are as steadfastly convinced of this as they are of the idea that there is a girl carrying a pail of water on the moon. No Tungus ever kills this largest and most powerful predator in the Siberian forests without a compelling reason. Yet it is not the bear's strength which fills the Tungus with such awe and respect nor the elemental power of the mighty beast which makes them tremble. There are deeper reasons for their dread of the bear's soul. A bear's facial expression can be extraordinarily human at times. A bear can walk upright on two legs and when skinned bears a gruesome resemblance to a man. Finally, there is an ancient belief that the bear is in communication with the Lord of the Mountains and with the sky, and certainly he has from time immemorial been surrounded by an aura which enjoins caution and respect.

Very large numbers of brown bear live in the North Manchurian taiga. There is Ursus arctos, which inhabits the densest forests of central and northern Asia, Eurasian Russia and the coasts of the Sea of Okhotsk. I also saw the massive gray bear, the largest surviving predator on earth, which resembles the grizzly or giant bear of Alaska or Ursus arctos horribilis, the Kodiak bear. This animal has been described as bulky, clumsy and awkward, but sharp, curved claws, immensely powerful masticatory equipment and bunches of neck and shoulder muscle make even the heaviest bear an agile climber and allow him to haul his massive body up trees by the brute force of his arms and legs.

[brobear]

MORE: One of the finest bear pictures comes from the cave of Teyjat in Dordogne. The animal certainly looks very like a brown bear. Although the head is well rounded, the limbs are relatively long and slim. The same species probably is represented by a very peculiar engraving in the cave of Trois-Freres in Ariege, France. This bear, according to Count Begouen and the Abbe Breuil, seems to be vomiting its blood, and there are various signs on its body, some of them perhaps representing spears or other projectiles. The bear's flat and low head profile apparently proclaim it a brown bear and not a cave bear. 
  

[brobear]

The oldest discovered statue, fashioned some fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, is of a bear. Why would this be so, if the bear did not hold some very special place in the human psyche?

[OldGreenGrolar]

Reply 4. It looks like a drawing of a brown bear ready for hibernation.

[brobear]

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.

[brobear]

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.

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.

[Montezuma]

A good documentry explaining the Cult of Bears in Prehistory.

[brobear]

A good documentry explaining the Cult of Bears in Prehistory. I just finished watching. Excellent. I hope that they are wrong about the extinction of bears within the near future.