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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:29:13 GMT -5
Continued.... The brown bear appears first of all as a powerful and massive creature that could reach a ( bipedal ) height of eight or nine feet and a weight of 600, 800, or even 1,000 pounds. Those are, of course, record figures, at least in Europe, but it is likely that ancient and midieval bears were heavier than their present-day descendants. The bear is fattest in late autumn, when it begins hibernation. Its heavy look and clumsy appearance are accentuated by a short, thick neck of extraordinary strength and a very broad chest. Neck and chest contrast with a relatively small head and modest hindquarters. The animal's primary strength is located in the muscles of the neck, shoulders, arms, and chest. It resembles a stocky wrestler with a disproportionately large upper body. This is confirmed by anatomic analysis of its musculature, which reveals very powerful brachial, dorsal, and pectoral muscles. They are what enable the bear to carry or haul loads heavier than itself, to move gigantic blocks of stone, to break huge tree trunks, to kill a man or a large animal - cattle or wild game - with a single blow of a paw.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:30:25 GMT -5
Continued.... Despite the disproportionately small size of its head compared to its chest, the bear has very well-developed masticatory and temporal muscles. They are associated with a versatile and effective dental apparatus adapted to its omnivorous diet. First, there are incisors that are veritable pincers, enabling the animal not only to cut almost anything but also to grasp farm animals ( sheep, goats, pigs ) and carry them in its mouth. The canines are fearsomely sharp, and with them it lacerates and tears its prey to pieces. Finally, huge molars enable it to grind any vegetable and extract fruits from their shells. But the small size of the jaw opening means that it makes less use of its teeth than of its forepaws, particularly the left one, which it sometimes uses as a club, to attack and kill. Two writers, one medieval and the other modern, have concluded - a bit too hastily - that it was "left-handed," a particularity which, added to many others, seemed to strengthen its troubling, not to say harmful character. Earlier cultures, notably the Christian culture of the Middle Ages, saw left-handedness as the sign of an evil nature, or indeed of a counter-nature.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:31:09 GMT -5
Continued.... To its extraordinary muscular strength, the bear adds resistance to fatigue and to bad weather unmatched by any other European species. The bear seems not to be troubled by cold, rain, snow, wind, or storm; only extreme heat reduces its activity and impels it to rest. But bears generally seem to overcome all the hostile forces of nature and to look on any form of danger with contempt. No animal frightens them, not even the largest boars they encounter in the woods and that sometimes battle with them over prey, and even less the packs of wolves that attack bears in winter in groups of fifteen or twenty and try to tear them to pieces. The bear fears nothing and is, indeed, practically invincible.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:31:28 GMT -5
Continued from post #39... It is therefore hardly surprising that this animal fascinated humanity from very ancient times and became the embodiment of brute force, unconquerable courage, and superiority over all other animals. For most northern and northwestern European peoples of antiquity, who had never had any occasion to see elephants or the great beasts of Africa or Asia, the bear, present in every forest, became almost naturally the king of wild fauna and the emblem of chiefs and warriors. One after the other, Germans, Celts, Slavs, and Lapps looked on it as an animal apart, made it the central figure in their bestiary, and worshiped it in various manners. The problem remains for the historian to determine the links that may have existed between possible Paleolithic bear cults and the cults of antiquity and the High Middle Ages, well attested as early as the first millennium before our era and solidly documented in the periods preceding Christianization. Mythological narratives offer some suggestive hints, but obviously they do not make it possible to fill in the thirty or forty thousand years separating the former from the latter.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:32:28 GMT -5
Continued.... Whereas the Celts and Germans had seen pictures of lions or elephants only relatively recently, shortly before or shortly after the Roman conquest, the situation was different for the peoples of Mediterranean Europe. They had long known of the existence of the large maned-cat, the huge pachyderm, and a few other exotic animals remarkable for their size, their power, and their appearance. The Romans in particular had been able to marvel at the physical presence of various species in the circus games that were larger and more savage than the European bear. *Note: the author is referring to the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the elephant as being larger and more savage than the European bear.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:33:14 GMT -5
Continued.... Although they sometimes staged battles in the arena between bears and bulls ( the bears almost always won ), they especially liked to see wild animals brought from Africa or Asia fight one another or against men. Sometimes, however, curiosity made them wonder about the strength of a bear or a bull compared to that of an animal from afar, and so there were battles between bears and lions, bears and panthers, bulls and lions, bulls and an elephant, and even a bear and a rhinoceros. Although bulls, fighting alone or in a group, seem never to have been victorious, a bear always won in single combat against a lion or against several panthers.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:33:48 GMT -5
Continued.... But that was not enough to make the bear the king of beasts in the eyes of the Romans. Like the Greeks - who had little fondness for animal combat - they preferred to install on the throne either lion or, perhaps more frequently, the elephant. There never seems to have been a battle between a bear and an elephant, but Martial recorded a combat in Rome late in the first century of our era between a bear and a rhinoceros: the latter won easily, piercing the bear's stomach with its horn, then lifting its wounded opponent from the ground with its snout and tossing it in the air several times. A cruel humiliation for the European champion.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:34:15 GMT -5
Continued from post #45... Aside from this battle ( bear vs rhino ), bears usually won glory in the circus games. They never fought against one another, but against bulls, lions, or venatores ( hunter-gladiators ) helped by dogs. It seems that the strongest came from Caledonia ( Scotland ) and Dalmatia. A mosaic fragment from the third century found in a suburb of Rodez representing Caledonian bears that had won renown in circus games preserves the names of six of them: two females ( Fedra and Alecsandria ) and four males ( Nilus, Simplicius, Braciatus, and the champion Gloriosus ).
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:35:08 GMT -5
Continued.... The warriors of Germany never heard of the defeat of the bear by the rhinoceros. For several more centuries, as they had from time immemorial, they continued to hold the bear in the highest esteem. In their eyes, this almost-invincible animal, more than any other living being, embodied strength and power. Hence, they sought to compare themselves to bears, to confront and defeat them and take on their powers, and to turn into both their emblem and their ancestor. For the Germans, the bear was much more than king of the forest or the bestiary, it was the quintessential totemic animal.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:35:49 GMT -5
Continued.... For young men, for example, fighting and killing a bear was an obligatory rite of passage for admission into the world of adult warriors. More than a ceremony tied to the hunt, it was an initiation ritual that ended with hand-to-hand combat between man and beast. The young man had only his dagger to get the better of the animal, and the bear used its forepaws as a vice to try to crush the man against its chest. The young warrior had to avoid being crushed, battered, or lacerated, but it was nonetheless by allowing himself to be as closely held as possible by the beast that he would manage to stab his opponent in the belly. The bear contributed to its own death by squeezing the young warrior against itself, with his dagger coming before him. But the man often died of suffocation before he could stab the point of his weapon into the skin of the huge beast.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:36:26 GMT -5
Continued.... Later, various sagas and narrative texts from Iceland and Scandinavia allude to similar rituals. In his 'Gesta Danorum', which recounts the history of the Danish people from the beginning to the end of the twelfth century, the learned Saxo Grammaticus ( 1150 - 1220 ), for example, tells how a very young man named Skiold, while on a bear hunt, had to confront a huge bear unarmed and bare-handed; despite this disadvantage, he managed to immobilize the animal, tie it up with his belt, and lead it toward the other hunters, who killed it. This feat made him a respected adult warrior, and the memory of the glorious deed later helped him to mount the throne as the king of Denmark. Real or legendary, the exploit of the young Skiold took place before the year 1000, when Scandinavia was still pagan.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:37:18 GMT -5
Continued.... But even long after Christianization, defeating a bear in single combat remained for young nobles of northern Germany and Norway a mark of courage and a sign of uncommon quality as a warrior. A victory over the wild animal often foreshadowed for the victor a future as chief or king. Many chronicles and literary works tell the tale of a hero who, after defeating a bear, takes the fate of his people or his lineage in hand and finds glory. But not all these heroes were fictitious; some very real major figures of the feudal period are said to have defeated a bear in their youth, and by this deed to have come to the notice of their elders or their peers. These tales, a legacy of German and Scandinavian societies of antiquity and the High Middle Ages, were found not only in Germany, Denmark, and Iceland; they also circulated in Scotland, England, France, and even in the Holy Land, showing that medieval Christian culture, child of the Bible and the Greco-Roman world, was also long imbued with "barbarian" traditions.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:38:06 GMT -5
Continued.... The chronicler Albert of Aachen, canon at Aix-la-Chapelle, was the first to provide a detailed account of the combat between the duke and the animal. Godfrey was riding alone in a wood when he saw a bear of extraordinary size with exceedingly long and sharp teeth and claws attacking a pilgrim. He immediately came to the help of the unfortunate victim and confronted the huge beast. The bear first attacked the horse, which it soon killed and tore to pieces; then it threw itself on the rider, who had fallen to the ground armed with only a sword. They engaged in a violent hand-to-hand combat that lasted for a considerable time, with the advantage shifting back and forth between the animal and the duke. Finally, Godfrey succeeded in mortally wounding the bear in the head and nack; but he felt his strength ebbing and was about to perish, smothered by the dying monster, which was gripping him with its forepaws, when one of his companions named Husechin, alerted by the great uproar, came to the scene and freed the duke from the mortal clasp of the beast. The two men then killed the bear, "saying they had never seen anything like it in size."
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:38:40 GMT -5
Continued.... Albert's account, written between 1120 and 1130 and repeated by several chroniclers of the twelfth centuries, notably by William of Tyre, is clearly nothing but a series of cliches intended to bring out Godfrey's courage and prowess. The fact that he was not able to completely vanquish the enormous animal adds a touch of truth and humanity to the story and makes the hero's exploit even more credible, but hardly changes the lengthy accumulation of commonplaces that make up the meticulous description of the battle, intended to emphasize the victor's uncommon qualities. Thereafter, historians and chroniclers were prolific about his deeds of battle, before and during the crusade, and gave prominence to his valor, generosity, and great piety, with the aim of making him the picture of the perfect Christian knight. In the fourteenth century, this earned him a place in the exemplary company of the "Nine Worthies," in which he was, along with Charlemagne and King Arthur, one of the three Christian worthies. This was a surprising posthumous fate for a prince who was a younger son in the family, but legend set him on an equal footing with the great Emperor of the West and the prestigious sovereign of medieval literature.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:39:18 GMT -5
Continued.... There is a long list of literary or legendary heroes who, over the course of the twelfth century, confronted a bear or an ursine monster, beginning with the greatest of them: Roland, Tristan, Lancelot, Yvain, and King Arthur himself. But this obligatory ritual had now been Christianized and had preserved nothing of the savage trance that possessed warriors confronting the beast in pagan Germanic traditions. Several sagas and epic poems, certain narrative and mythological texts, and a few iconographic representations have preserved traces of the various practices through which those warriors, before or after the battle, sought to fill themselves with the beast's powers. These practices could not help but terrify bishops and clergy, who did everything possible to put an end to them as soon as the regions concerned were Christianized.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:40:12 GMT -5
Continued.... The most savage of these practices was drinking the animal's blood and eating its flesh, a kind of ritual meal of a strongly totemic ( in the anthropological sense ) character, which helped to symbolically transform the warrior into a bear, to endow him with the animal's strength and thereby make him invincible. An ancient version of the 'Landnamabok' ( Book of the Colonization of Iceland ), for example, tells how a figure named Odd attacked a colossal bear that had killed his father and brother, slew and butchered it, and ate all its flesh, thereby transforming himself into a kind of unconquerable half-man half-animal. Thereafter, out of a spirit of vengeance, he tried to kill as many bears as possible until the day he died. Later on, in the twelfth century, in a compilation of excerps from various sagas, Saxo Grammaticus explains how "some ancient Danish warriors" used to drink the blood of the bears they had defeated to become as fearsome as the beasts; he even explains that a bath in the animal's blood could be joined with or replace the bloody drink.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:40:45 GMT -5
Continued.... Earlier, among the ancient Scandinavians, the most famous and probably most frequent ursine ritual was not consumption of the flesh and blood of the animal but disguise using the animal's skin. The sagas and tales of Norse mythology present heroes going into combat wearing the skin of the animal they have killed. This garment of fur imbues them with the power of the beast, protects them from adversity, and endows them with incomparable strength. The most fearsome of these warriors were the Berserkers, who were soldiers of Odin, the chief divinity of the Norse pantheon, a cruel, treacherous, and cynical god, secretive and omniscient. The great Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson, in 'Ynglinga Saga', the first part of his long 'Heimskringla Saga', written between 1220 and 1230, probably provided the best description of the Berserker. They "went to battle without coats of mail and acted like mad dogs or wolves. They bit their shields and were as strong as bears or bulls. They killed people, and neither fire nor iron affected them. This is called berserker rage.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:41:22 GMT -5
Continued.... There were other customs, more peaceful and better documented, among the ancient Germans and Scandinavians that brought out the bonds uniting the bear and the warrior. There was, for example, the custom of carrying on one's person a bear's teeth or claws, talismans that had already been used by men of the Paleolithic. There was above all the habit of using in combat signs, weapons, and armor decorated with the image of a bear, which clearly functioned not as decoration but as protection; it was both emblematic and prophylactic. The bear was, of course, not the only animal used for this purpose. Other animal figures expressed the identity of the group or clan, sometimes that of a single warrior; they evoked the totem-animal, called forth its protection, captured its strength, and terrified the enemy. The number of animals in this bestiary was limited: crow, eagle, stag,boar, or bear. Employed less often were wolf, horse,bull, falcon, lion, panther, dragon, and griffin.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:42:22 GMT -5
Continued.... The bear occupied the central place in this bestiary. It was found on banners, helmets, and swords, as well as on belt buckles and metal plates reinforcing breastplates or armor. It was found less frequently on clasps and absent from brooches and jewelry. It played a clearly military role. Moreover, archeological investigation has never uncovered a woman's jewel or an accessory for a female costume decorated with a bear. For periods preceding Chritianization, the bulk of our information comes from abundant funerary material found in tombs.
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Post by brobear on Mar 19, 2017 6:42:53 GMT -5
Continued.... There are countless simple or compound names based on the roots Ber, Bern, Bera, Born, Beorn, Per, Pern, Bjorn, and so on, all forms derived from the word for bear. With few exceptions, they are masculine names. Moreover, the war god Thor was early on given as surname the common name for bear in Old Norse: bjorn ( Thorbjorn ); in northern Europe, the god of warriors, thunder, and lightning was a thoroughly ursine god.
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