SCI Skull of small cave bear from the last ICE AGE that was pierced by a spear may be the earliest evidence of humans hunting the animal

[Melodi]

Skull of Ice Age cave bear earliest evidence of humans hunting it

The skull of a small Ice Age cave bear was found in Russia with a large hole at the back. Scientists believe the hole was made by a spear that was driven into the animal's head while it hibernated.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Skull of small cave bear from the last ICE AGE that was pierced by a spear may be the earliest evidence of humans hunting the animal

• Skull of a small cave bear that lived 35,000 years ago was uncovered in Russia
• The skull has a hole at the back, which experts say was made from a spear
• Scientists believe the bear was killed while it was hibernating in the cave
• This would be the earliest evidence of humans hunting small cave bears

By STACY LIBERATORE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 19:47, 8 June 2021 | UPDATED: 20:55, 8 June 2021

The skull of an small cave bear from the last Ice Age has been found in Russia and it may hold the earliest evidence of the animal being hunted by humans.

A team from the Ural Federal University uncovered the skull in the Imanay Cave, which bears a hole made from a spear that was pushed into its head about 35,000 years ago.

The bear, according to researchers, was nine to 10 years old when it was killed while hibernating during the last Ice Age that occurred 115,000 to 11,700 years ago.

However, the team also suggests that the hole may have occurred naturally by ‘a stone could fall on the bear's head, or water dripped onto the skull during thousands of years,’ Dmitry Gimranov, senior researcher of the laboratories at the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Ural Federal University, said in a statement.

‘But this is highly unlikely. Most likely the animal was killed by ancient people,’ he continued.

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The skull of an Ice Age cave bear found in Russia may hold the earliest evidence of the animal being hunted by humans

The cave bear skull was one of more than 10,000 remains of the Late Pleistocene period uncovered during three years of excavations in the Bashkiria National Park.

The most recent Ice Age occurred during the Pleistocene period, which started 2.8 million years ago and lasted until 11,700 years ago.

Remains include thousands of bone fragments from red foxes, mammoths, cave lions and wooly rhinos that once roamed the area, according to the study published in Vestnik Archeologii, Anthropologii I Ethnographii.

To establish whether the bear was killed or not, scientists set out to date when the hole was made - during life or after the death of the animal.

If the hole was made in the bear's skull after it died, that could be evidence of a ritual, which was common during the era.

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The bear, according to researchers, was nine to 10 years old when it was killed while hibernating during the last Ice Age that occurred 115,000 to 11,700 years ago

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A team from the Ural Federal University uncovered the skull in the Imanay Cave

Gimranov and his team were able to date the bear skull using growth layers on its teeth, which also allowed them to determine the bear’s age when it died.

The skull was also found near evidence of Pleistocene human habitation, which supports the notion that the animal was murdered in its sleep by humans.

Pleistocene humans hunted large animals to support an entire community, so a small cave bear is a rare prey during this time.
However, Gimranov also notes that these ancient humans had such strength that they could pierce the bear skull with a spear at close range with relative ease.

Cave bears inhabited the territory of northern Eurasia in the Late Pleistocene, which ranged from 250,000 to roughly 10,000 years ago, the statement added.

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The skull was found mixed in with human artifacts (left)). Right is an drawing of the now extinct cave bear

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Gimranov and his team were able to date the bear skull using growth layers on its teeth, which also allowed them to determine the bear’s age when it died.

These animals were often found in the faunas of Western Europe, the Russian Caucasus and the Urals.

And many excavations have found both remains of the ancient cave bears and humans mixed inside caves, so the latest discovery is not uncommon.

However, the Pleistocene small cave bear is not a very common type of cave bear.

The animal weighed between 880 to 2,200 pounds, with the largest comparable to the Kodiak bears found in Alaska.
And the first remains of a cave bear were unearthed in Great Britain in 1922.

 

[West]

"The skull was also found near evidence of Pleistocene human habitation, which supports the notion that the animal was murdered in its sleep by humans."

Vary stupid (PC) way of saying that humans harvested a cave bear?

And that was no small friggin bear! Just judging from the size of the skull, and assuming a bit, at least 500 pound beast. Just noted they said around 1000 pounds! Dang!

And the fact that it was probably harvested with a stick and rock spear, no matter if it was sleeping or not. The human that did that had huge balls! Hats off!

 

[Dozdoats]

Hey, dinner is dinner.

 

[Melodi]

The location suggested it was hibernating, which is how more recent hunters and gatherers tended to take bears. This case isn't proven, but it is highly likely.

 

[West]

The location suggested it was hibernating, which is how more recent hunters and gatherers tended to take bears. This case isn't proven, but it is highly likely.

Yeah, but hibernating doesn't mean dead. I would have to be really crazy to take with crafted spear, a hibernating 1000 pound bear.

Would muse that if the first blow was not on the mark. You would end up as a late night snack.

 

[PghPanther]

and in other news........"Anthropologist find evidence of the first ever bear suicide in history"

 

[20Gauge]

"The skull was also found near evidence of Pleistocene human habitation, which supports the notion that the animal was murdered in its sleep by humans."

Vary stupid (PC) way of saying that humans harvested a cave bear?

And that was no small friggin bear! Just judging from the size of the skull, and assuming a bit, at least 500 pound beast. Just noted they said around 1000 pounds! Dang!

And the fact that it was probably harvested with a stick and rock spear, no matter if it was sleeping or not. The human that did that had huge balls! Hats off!

I caught that also. "murdered"???

Also it was consistent with the creed of harvesting large animals as it was not a "small" small cave bear. Author failed to read what he wrote. LOL

 

[20Gauge]

The location suggested it was hibernating, which is how more recent hunters and gatherers tended to take bears. This case isn't proven, but it is highly likely.

You have 2 choices.

1) Hunt bear when awake and hungry
2) Hunt bear when sleepy and not aware.

I would go with option 2 as the normal method to hunt bears.

 

[West]

You have 2 choices.

1) Hunt bear when awake and hungry
2) Hunt bear when sleepy and not aware.

I would go with option 2 as the normal method to hunt bears.

Sometimes option one is best, if you can send dead beat brother/mother/etc.. in law to go hunting when bears are awake and hungry.

Still have huge respect for the human that stuck that bear in the back of the head. Just dang,!

 

[Melodi]

Sometimes, to do very early archeology you need to think like an Ice Age hunter in Winter whose small group may not have had any meat for days, whose women are running out of milk, and whose babies and small children are likely to die soon if they don't get some meat.

The big herd animals are not migrating exactly where you are, the deer and elk are scarce and you find a young bear (not a full-grown monster, and fully grown cave bears were huge) in the back of the cave, maybe the one that is your usual Winter Home?

You and your buddies have years of experience based on thousands of years of hunting big game with spears and other projectile points. Yes, it is dangerous, many hunters die; that is one reason they get so much respect but in Ice Age conditions the entire tribe will die without them.

Now, do you choose to risk all and hunt the hibernating bear or do you move on, hoping to find shelter somewhere else and meat somewhere else in time to keep everyone alive? Remember it is Winter, not much for the ladies to gather except roots under the frozen ground this time of year.

Decisions, decisions...

 

[db cooper]

"The skull was also found near evidence of Pleistocene human habitation, which supports the notion that the animal was murdered in its sleep by humans."

Vary stupid (PC) way of saying that humans harvested a cave bear?

I just don't see your problem with the author using the word "murdered". Come on man, don't you know those Ruskies are some very mean spirited sub humans? After all, think of the Russian collusion that stole the 2016 election from Hitlery? /s/

 

[Dozdoats]

I'd guarantee that cave bears murdered hominids first .....

 

[colonel holman]

“murdered” may have been a translation error, but I doubt that.
A spear shot to the skull had to be a mis-targeting fault. Cannot imagine relying on that on a bear. If he was asleep, a thorax shot followed quickness of feet would have been a better choice. I have hunted bear and guided hunts, and would never trust a head shot with a modern rifle

 

[night driver]

OK, Doz and Melodi, you can stop keeping score now, as it has been declared a permanent "draw".

even though I LOVE the competition...I keep learning neat things.

 

[20Gauge]

“murdered” may have been a translation error, but I doubt that.
A spear shot to the skull had to be a mis-targeting fault. Cannot imagine relying on that on a bear. If he was asleep, a thorax shot followed quickness of feet would have been a better choice. I have hunted bear and guided hunts, and would never trust a head shot with a modern rifle

Yes, but you can not see that in the bones. I am betting a dozen spears hit that guy at once. Not one like the article states.

 

[Melodi]

Actually, I asked Nightwolf who has actually hunted and brought down a bear and he said in a survival situation (as opposed to a sport, a spiritual quest, or a cull) he chooses to kill a hibernating bear over a fully awake one. He also pointed out the "especially if we got back from the Summer Migration and found him sleeping in our 'human' den."

Different situations make for different "good" responses.

 

[BadMedicine]

Several things.

Small cave bear is the name of a species, as opposed to great cave bear. This one was grown, and not small.
A large grizzly has a skull measurement of 28-30+ inches. This is length PLUS width. Judging by the skull on the table I'd say it's 14" long and that means probably 11-2" wide.. so a 25-26" skull, probably a 9' bear... of 500-800#s, depending on health and time of year. This being a mountain bear vs a coastal/salmon run fed bear, and being durng winter (not sure how they deduced that but maybe it's possible) probably in the 5-600 range.

The rounded back part of skulls is very thin. Green bone cuts easily as it is wet and living cells.

At spear jabbing distance, or any distance at which a spear was thrown, penetration would have been pretty given. People this long ago used atlats (though neanderthals were still roaming at this time... they use hand-jabbed spears and never threw them.. their shoulder anatomy tells us that..) Atlatls used by humans had heavy spears and heads on them....

Seams theres a lot of speculation or just bad reporting. Early people would not have turned down a bear, the hide, fat, meat, all those things very valuable to early man, nor would he have feared it. being students of nature, animal habits and habitats, and being group hunters, early man would have jumped to throw this ol boy in the larder.

Watching a bear go to den in the fall might have been for some people a "freezer full of meat" to be stored until they needed it. No game close to camp for a couple weeks in frigid temps.. guess it's time to cash in the "bear card" we found in the fall.

 

[WalknTrot]

Cave bear hibernation may be a bit different than black bear - who knows. Behavior isn't evident in fossils.

BUT the first bear my dad ever killed was one that he literally stumbled on mid-November (stepped through it's snow-covered hibernation brushpile - right on top of the bear) and Mr. Bear wasn't all THAT sleepy. "Woke" enough to be pissed. Lucky Dad was deer hunting, and in the old days in Minnesota, when you bought a deer license, you also automatically got a bear license included. So he shot that bear..mostly to keep it from taking the snooze disturbance out on him.

I say, good for cave-man guy/gal. That's proof of one for the human team!

 

[Tristan]

There was a post on here about a pup found in permafrost in eastern Russia which dated to about the same time (originally thought to be 34k y.a.); it was found near evidence of human habitation, and dna analysis showed it was 'canis familiaris' i.e. the common Dog. That means that domestication happened a reasonably long period prior to that poor pup's demise.

Our partners have been by our side for a long, long time.

This is all from memory, so forgive if I get some of the details off a bit.

It's not out of the realm of possibility that the Humans who took this bear could have done so with the aid of their hunting Dogs; instead of watching a bear go into hibernation, use "Man's best Friend" to hunt them where they slumber. Safer; more consistent results - one would think.

 

[db cooper]

“murdered” may have been a translation error, but I doubt that.

My first thought was a translation error too. But the dolts that wrote the article in English should have figured it out. I suspect it is a genuine translation error, that the clowns writing this knew it and purposely left it there for the very reasons lefties does things. It's all brainwashing, it's all propaganda.

To think the Germans (in the Nazi era) and Russians (in their commie era) had to go through this shit for years and decades. They read news print and listened to the radio knowing full well they were being fed pure bullshit. And when they went to vote they had their own versions of Dominion, only it was all manual cheating.

 

[teedee]

We made a trip to Alaska years ago and one of the trips was a talk by a native near Denali. One of the things he told us was that as a young man to prove yourself you had to crawl into a hibernating bears cave and kill it. When he did that he used a 355 H&H mag rifle which was a lot easier than the spear they used to use.

 

[colonel holman]

We made a trip to Alaska years ago and one of the trips was a talk by a native near Denali. One of the things he told us was that as a young man to prove yourself you had to crawl into a hibernating bears cave and kill it. When he did that he used a 355 H&H mag rifle which was a lot easier than the spear they used to use.

Must have ruined their hearing after discharge inside a cave. Happened to me with 12ga inside our maple sugar house clearing out an angry racoon.

 

[night driver]

Y'all really should read "Clan of the cave Bear" as it will seriously adjust your thinking here.

Believe the author's name is Jean Auell.

 

[Faroe]

Y'all really should read "Clan of the cave Bear" as it will seriously adjust your thinking here.

Believe the author's name is Jean Auell.

How much research did she do?
Had a saccharine quality that put me off. I didn't finish it.

 

[Melodi]

How much research did she do?
Had a saccharine quality that put me off. I didn't finish it.

She did a lot for the first book, a lot of what she used came from a book in the early 70s called: The Flower People which was actually a cave in Iraq (rather than Northern Europe) where some of the first pollen testings were done. It was discovered that after a natural rock fall, had killed several of the people (Neanderthals), and then living people had gone back and buried them with flowers.

On individual had lived for years, perhaps decades with a withered arm and leg, showing that Neanderthals not only tried to take care of their dead but also their disabled living (the man could not have survived without help). He also had the wear and tear on his teeth from many years spent usefully chewing hides to make them soft for wearing.

The really shocking surprise was when the flower pollen was analyzed, only those flowers on that individual were healing and medicinal plants still used in the area today. This was also the first sign that not only did Neanderthals respect their dead and cared for their disabled, but the disabled guy might also have been a healer. Oh, and those plants were from a distant location (at least 30 to 50 miles away).

People who have read the first book will recognize this person and this burial.

Later books did suffer somewhat from what I call "your hero/heroine saves the universe and invents everything" sort of like a female "Wesley Crusher" of the stone age.

But the author did her research and updated with the times when weaving and pottery figurines were discovered in Stone age Europe they are in the book when it was discovered that Neanderthals could almost certainly talk she deals with that by having vocalized speech being something very special and many groups using sign language for day to day conversations.

In my view, the author actually is a better researcher than she is a fiction writer and sadly that shows. Also, some of the older books were based on the archeology of time, which tends to date things. On the other hand, long before it was "cool" she had Neanderthals and Modern Humans mating and producing fertile offspring which we now know they did. At the time she was highly criticized for that by some researchers.

Shanidar, the First Flower People

"The exploration of Shanidar Cave in Iraq has resulted in one of the most significant archaeological finds of recent years--the first archaeological traces of 'human nature.' And Ralph Solecki's firsthand account superbly communicates the excitement, the continual surprises, the labor...

books.google.ie

 

[WalknTrot]

Y'all really should read "Clan of the cave Bear" as it will seriously adjust your thinking here.

Believe the author's name is Jean Auell.

Read them all. They got increasingly unrealistic for the most part. As Melodi said...good research, but IMHO a whole lot of fantasy too.

As far as cave bears go...they are extinct. We aren't.

 

[BadMedicine]

We made a trip to Alaska years ago and one of the trips was a talk by a native near Denali. One of the things he told us was that as a young man to prove yourself you had to crawl into a hibernating bears cave and kill it. When he did that he used a 355 H&H mag rifle which was a lot easier than the spear they used to use.

375 H&H. Thats my bear gun too. Good elephant gun too, that's why I chose it.
I read a book about a guy named Sydney (This book here Alaskool: Book review of Shadows on the Koyukuk ) Who talked to one of the last men to have climbed in a grizzly den and killed it with a spear. They don't even mention the name grizzly they say "The big one," or "the mean one"... to say its name can put bad luck on the hunt/hunters. Can't even mention the upcoming hunt or tell anyone or they may warn the bears spirit. Great book.

 

[Squib]

I’d have to depend on the .338 win mag, or 45-70…but truth be told, I have my old uncles .06 from Alaska, he hunted moose and big bear back in the 50’s and had no problem…220 grain 30.06 works fine with good shot placement.

As far as the article, I can’t remember if the author of the fiction story “Captain Clark”, is still in this board, but IIRC, the guy killed the bear for the cave more than anything!

 

[West]

“murdered” may have been a translation error, but I doubt that.
A spear shot to the skull had to be a mis-targeting fault. Cannot imagine relying on that on a bear. If he was asleep, a thorax shot followed quickness of feet would have been a better choice. I have hunted bear and guided hunts, and would never trust a head shot with a modern rifle

Right!

That's why I'm so flabbergasted. Amazing feat!

 

[West]

Several things.

Small cave bear is the name of a species, as opposed to great cave bear. This one was grown, and not small.
A large grizzly has a skull measurement of 28-30+ inches. This is length PLUS width. Judging by the skull on the table I'd say it's 14" long and that means probably 11-2" wide.. so a 25-26" skull, probably a 9' bear... of 500-800#s, depending on health and time of year. This being a mountain bear vs a coastal/salmon run fed bear, and being durng winter (not sure how they deduced that but maybe it's possible) probably in the 5-600 range.

The rounded back part of skulls is very thin. Green bone cuts easily as it is wet and living cells.

At spear jabbing distance, or any distance at which a spear was thrown, penetration would have been pretty given. People this long ago used atlats (though neanderthals were still roaming at this time... they use hand-jabbed spears and never threw them.. their shoulder anatomy tells us that..) Atlatls used by humans had heavy spears and heads on them....

Seams theres a lot of speculation or just bad reporting. Early people would not have turned down a bear, the hide, fat, meat, all those things very valuable to early man, nor would he have feared it. being students of nature, animal habits and habitats, and being group hunters, early man would have jumped to throw this ol boy in the larder.

Watching a bear go to den in the fall might have been for some people a "freezer full of meat" to be stored until they needed it. No game close to camp for a couple weeks in frigid temps.. guess it's time to cash in the "bear card" we found in the fall.

Sounds reasonably to me.

Good stuff!

 

[fish hook]

Y'all really should read "Clan of the cave Bear" as it will seriously adjust your thinking here.

Believe the author's name is Jean Auell.

Enjoyed the series, but there is probably a lot of speculation in it.

 

[nehimama]

The skull was also found near evidence of Pleistocene human habitation, which supports the notion that the animal was murdered in its sleep by humans.

anthropomorphic much?