The Home of the Cave Bear
www.donsmaps.com/bear.html Skeletons of the prehistoric great cave bear are almost never missing from amongst the faunal remains in European caves. The cave bear seems to have been distributed all over Europe, for its remains have been found in German and British caves as well as in the Pyrenees and the south-east. To judge by the frequency with which its skeleton occurs, the cave bear must have existed in stupendous numbers during the Ice Age. Just as the hyaena of today is allied to the prehistoric cave hyaena, so the modern brown bear (Ursus aretos) is descended from the great cave bear (Ursus spelaeus). Unlike the brown bear, however, the cave bear was a beast of prey. It is also clear from the skeletons that the cave bear was considerably larger than the brown bear. It was, in fact, a gigantic beast, as large as a bull, but with bones far more ponderous than those of an ox, and huge muscles. Many of the skulls found show canine teeth the size of bananas. When full-grown it reached a length of ten feet and stood five feet at the shoulder. With its long, shaggy hair and five strong, non-retractile claws on each paw it must have presented a truly terrifying sight. Norbert Casteret, who has devoted much study to reconstructing the habits of these formidable beasts from their remains, points out that, secure in their great strength, they had no need to drag their prey into caves like most animals, but devoured it in the open air. This is evident from the fact that no food debris ever accompanies the cave bear skeletons in caves.
One of the most noteworthy bear caverns in Europe is the Karlshohle at Erpfingen in the Swabian Alps, discovered in 1834 by a school-teacher named Fauth. One particular cavern of the Karlshohle was given the name 'Bears' Cave' because of the quantity of bears' skeletons obtained from it. This cavern, a continuation of the Karlshohle, was not discovered until 1949. The old Karlshohle is a stalactite cave; for many decades it was pillaged both of stalactite formations and of remains of cave bear. The Bears' Cave escaped this fate, so that bear skulls and skeletons may still be seen there in situ in great numbers. The Karlshohle comprises seven great chambers, of which the first is twenty to thirty feet high and thirty to sixty feet wide, while Hall VI, the finest of the lot and containing the greatest number of bear skele- tons, is fifty feet high and seventy feet wide. Hall I, which is lit from above by the so-called Fauth's Hole, is notable for the fact that a fifteen-feet-high pile of rubble underneath this hole was found to contain no less than fifty human skeletons, believed to be those of plague victims thrown down the shaft. They are accompanied by the bones of a quantity of domestic animals. It looks as though the shaft had once been used by a knacker. Hall II contains an ancient hearth with wood charcoal and the charred bones of deer and pig, evidence of human occupation at some period.
The Karlshohle is a good example of a stalactite cave with splendid cascades, curtains, organ pipes, embossments, cones, and lacework, many of them in bright colours. Hall VII is geologically remarkable. In it stands a beetling crag which is not, like the rest of the cave, white Jurassic lime- stone, but thick calcite interspersed with layers of biggish calcite crystals, some of which are transparent or snow- white, while others are clouded and coloured by iron com- pounds.
The Bears' Cave, which opens out of the Karlshohle and is reached by ascending a slope of flowstone, was the true abode of the cave bear. A large number of bear skeletons lie beneath a covering of flowstone (layers of calcite, which is crystalline calcium carbonate deposited from thin films of saturated calcium carbonate solution, set hard after loss of carbon dioxide and evaporation of water) at the entrance to the cavern. A three-feet-high hollow stalagmite of calcite has formed on one pelvic bone. One of the finest and most impressive parts of the cavern is the 'Great Half, measuring thirty-three feet in height and a hundred in width and filled with stalactites and stalagmites, particularly the latter. A multitude of small straw stalactites cover the ceiling, and at one point a row of longer stalactites betray a crack in the rock through which the water perpetually seeps. The present floor of the cave is covered over with flowstone, in which are embedded a large number of bear bones skulls, jawbones, shoulder blades, spines, three pelvises, and thighbones. The complete skeleton of a bear assembled by Professor von Huene of Tubingen University, from bones found on the spot, stands in the centre of the cavern and adds to its impressiveness.
In the niche of the Great Hall, six bears' skulls were found one on top of the other. It is thought that the bears used this cave to hibernate in. This is probably where their young were born, and here they found their last resting-place. Amongst the chambers of the Bears' Cave, in addition to the Great Hall, the 'Great Sinter Dome' is especially remark- able. A fifty-foot vertical shaft leads into this cavern. In the course of the years, the water that poured down this shaft, whirling sand and shingle along with it, has carved corkscrew forms in its walls. Today this chimney issues in the topmost peak of the mountain.
The multitude of stalactite formations and the manifold shapes moulded by the deposition of calcite, coupled with the wealth of cave bear remains, render the Erpfingen Bears' Cave an unparalleled natural monument. It affords a direct and magnificent impression of the abode of the most widely distributed of cave creatures, the cave bear, and of its physical structure. Comparison of the mass-finds of cave bear in the Bears' Cave and other caverns in Europe as far as the Caucasus, and in North Africa, with the finds of other greater or lesser beasts of prey among its contemporaries, strongly suggests that the cave bear unlike modern beasts of prey or the generally solitary bears of today was gregarious. It is clear that the cave was a living-place, for among the bones of full-grown bears were many skeletons of half-grown cubs or sucklings. This assumption is confirmed by finds in other caves, for example the Nikolaushohle at Veringstadt, the cavern of Hohefels near Schelklingen, the Hepenloch at Gutenburg, and the cave at Velburg in the Upper Palatinate. Many caves contained prodigious quantities of bears' bones. The bone- and dung-impregnated cave earth of the Drachenhohle, or Dragon's Cave, at Mixnitz in Styria, yielded so much high-grade phosphatic fertilizer that sixty goods trains of fifty wagons each were needed to take it away.
Another region once inhabited by the cave bear, and still the haunt of its descendant the brown bear, is the Pyrenees. Every major palaeontological collection in France contains a complete skeleton of the cave bear, from which its great size may be seen. In the caverns of the Pyrenees bear skeletons are found in clay, not, as at Balve, under flowstone. The wide distribution of the finds and the depths to which the animal penetrated indicate that the bears explored every corner of the cave systems. Norbert Casteret reports finding the mark of bears claws on walls and floors covered with clay or delicate stalagmite deep in the heart of the mountain and even in narrow vertical passages, or chimneys.
'In the caverns of Planque (Haute-Garonne),' writes Gasteret, 'two hundred and thirty feet below ground, I found the skeletons of two bears which had fallen into one of the lower pits with vertical walls, and which died of hunger after violently scratching the rock in attempts to climb out.'
Similar clear traces have been found in many Pyrenean caves, including the famous Trois-Frres and the 'oubliettes' of the caverns of Gargas and Montespan. The marks of bears' paws in the clay, which has set hard with the passage of time, have been observed at many points. In the cavern of the Tuc d'Audoubert, which was a favourite resort of the cave bear, Count Begouen discovered what he has christened 'the bears' toboggan slide' a clay slope plunging into what used to be a small pond, though it is now dry. There is every sign that the bears used to go sliding down this slope and land in the muddy water. The marks of the hair of the bears' fur are still visible in the once plastic clay. Arctic explorers have watched polar bears indulging in this sport, to which seals are also addicted, on slopes of ice. Where opportunity offers, they may be seen amusing themselves in this way in zoos.
Gasteret also reports that cave bear found diversion in the bear dance, as the modern bear does today when bored by solitude or captivity. The bear dance consists in a perpetual rocking to and fro with the head swaying in unison. Signs of this dance are visible in the cave of Pene-Blanque (Haute-Garonne), 3,250 feet up in the Massif d'Arbas, in the shape of innumerable overlapping prints of its four paws in the clay, made as it shifted restlessly from side to side for hours on end during its long hibernation.
The number of artistic representations of the cave bear are surprisingly few in relation to its obvious numbers and ubiquity. This is attributed by Casteret to the existence of some magical taboo due to fear of the animal. He believes that 'the few depictions of cave bears which do exist were plainly the work of witch-doctors specially authorized to draw the accursed creature' .
The first representation of a cave bear was discovered by Dr. Garrigou in the Pyrenean Grotte de Massat (Ariege), where a large number of bear skeletons were also found. It is an engraving on a pebble of a bear rising on its hind legs in a menacing attitude, which is enhanced by an expression of ferocity on the face.
Several other portrayals of bears have come to light. The cavern of Marsoulas contains a full-face engraving, and a similar drawing engraved on a reindeer antler was found by the well-known speleologist fidouard Lartet in the Grotte de Massat. It is now in the Toulouse Museum. The cavern of Les Trois Freres, so often referred to already, also contains a drawing of three bears on the rock wall. They have all been disfigured, probably in the course of some obscure magic rite, and one of them is shown with a bison's tail and the spots of a leopard or hyaena.
The cave bear must have been an almost invincible opponent to prehistoric man, with his primitive weapons. When he succeeded in slaying one of these formidable monsters it meant not only a welcome source of meat and clothing, but also the accomplishment of a truly heroic deed. As an aid to the incantations designed to give them power over their adversary, the ancient hunters did not content them- selves with engraving the bear on the walls, but also made three-dimensional or high relief representations of him carved in rock or modelled in clay. Thus a small bear's head carved in rock has been found in the grotto of Isturitz (Basses-Pyrenees), while a clay statue of a cave bear has been obtained from the cavern of Montespan. The latter, which is headless and riddled with spear-holes, has evidently been mutilated in the course of prehistoric magic rites.
There remains the question of how the cave bear died out. It is not likely to have been exterminated by prehistoric man with his primitive weapons. Plenty of evidence points to its extinction having been due to degenerative disease. A large number of diseased bones and the remains of strikingly under-sized bears were found in the Drachenhohle at Mixnitz in Styria. The prehistorian O. Abel concluded from this that the whole species of Ursus spelaeus underwent a process of degeneration. 'Ursus spelaeus seems to have succumbed to a disease, for no migration can be traced' confirms Norbert Casteret. He surmises that the cave bear fell victim to a wave of extreme cold that swept across his habitat and brought with it degenerative disease and malformation of the bones.
The Museum of Natural History at Toulouse possesses a unique collection of diseased bear bones, in the shape of deformed jaws, joined vertebrae, shoulder blades encrusted with bony tumours, and limb bones distorted by arthritis.
Just when this crippling malady developed and how long it took to wipe out the species cannot be said for certain. It was probably a rapid process which took place when a period of intense cold forced the bears to shelter for long periods in damp caves, where they contracted rheumatism and gout.
The number of caves containing quantities of bear skulls, but no complete bear skeletons, suggests human handiwork. The absence of any trace of man in these caves is not conclusive evidence to the contrary. The drawings and models in the Pyrenean caves demonstrate that man once used the caverns, in which bear remains have been found, for ritual purposes. In many bear caverns the skulls of bears lie side by side on plinths or in niches in the cave walls. This is the case in the Karlshohle Bears' Gave at Erpfingen, the well known caverns of the northern Harz Mountains, and else- where. In the Drachenloch near Vattis, the Wildmannlisloch on the Selun (Switzerland), and the Petershohle near Velden in central Franconia bear skulls have even been found packed in a kind of box of stone slabs or piled up in niches in the rock. These are certainly not hunting trophies, which would have been displayed outside the cave. 'They are more likely to be evidence of a fully developed cult of this animal, which was so useful to man, a totemistic cult in which the bear appears both as a creature to be hunted and an object of veneration. Corresponding practices still live today among modern hunting peoples in Northern Asia. It may therefore be assumed that many bear caves were not places to which the bears went to give birth or die, but the sites of a cult that approaches the earliest forms of religious thinking. (Professor Friedrich Behn in Die Umschau, No. 22, 1950.)
We do not have to look as far back as the Ice Age to see the position occupied by the cave bear. The ancient Greeks considered the bear the strongest animal of the forest and held it sacred to the goddess Artemis. In ancient Nordic, Slav and Finnish popular belief the bear was regarded as holy. As a symbol of strength it was sacred to Thor, who himself bore the name of the beast : Bjorn. It was believed that the strength of the bear could be acquired from bear's blood. In olden days curative powers were attributed to the teeth, fat, gall and claws of bears. In the Middle Ages, bear hunting was still looked upon as a knightly exercise, and the heraldic bears in the arms of the cities of Berlin, Bern and Bernburg no doubt date from that time.