A look at France's Chauvet Cave, famously adorned with millennia of cave paintings marked by long, deep bear scratches, suggests cave-sharing between people and bears goes back a long way.
Cave bears (Ursus spelaeus) died out in Europe within the last 15,000 years. But, "the question of a special relationship between cave bears and humans, such as hunting or worshipping, is still a debated issue," notes a study in the current Journal of Human Evolution. Basically the debate is over whether people revered the bears or ate them.
Led by Herve' Bocherens. of France's Universite Montpellier, the study team took a look at that special relationship by dating the cave bear bones littering the cave, located in southern France. Cave art there dates to 32,000 years ago, well before the bears became extinct. (...)
Cave bears (Ursus spelaeus) died out in Europe within the last 15,000 years. But, "the question of a special relationship between cave bears and humans, such as hunting or worshipping, is still a debated issue," notes a study in the current Journal of Human Evolution. Basically the debate is over whether people revered the bears or ate them.
Led by Herve' Bocherens. of France's Universite Montpellier, the study team took a look at that special relationship by dating the cave bear bones littering the cave, located in southern France. Cave art there dates to 32,000 years ago, well before the bears became extinct. (...)
Full article: Usatoday.com
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