Wolves at bay!

The Lion-man and 40,000 years of wildlife management.

- DR VALERIUS GEIST

Let’s take a journey back through the mists of time with Dr Geist, and the figurine of a lion-man, to try and piece together the mystery of the big cat’s importance among the prehistoric humans.

An ivory, lion-headed human sculpture from the earliest Aurignacean period was discovered in the Hohlenstein Stadel Cave in southern

Germany, dating back some 35,000 to 40,000 years. The statue was portable and had a special meaning, distinct from other figurines, as its final resting place was in a separate chamber in the cave, well away from the living and working floors. This chamber apparently had ritual functions. The Venus of Hole Fels1 is not only of similar antiquity as the Lionheaded man, but was found with a very small figurine remarkably similar to the Lion-headed figure. A third tiny, indistinct, but apparently lion-headed figurine was found in the Geißenklösterle cave.

The lion-headed figurines indicate a widely accepted mythology, uniting humans and lions. And the seventy-three well executed, powerful lion images in the Chauvete Cave of the same age2 suggests the same. So, why were lions desirable? Why would one wish for them?

To answer this, we must consider the lifestyle of the Aurignaceans, the earliest modern people to enter Europe 45,000 to 40,000 years ago. They inserted themselves as apex predators into ecosystems already containing powerful apex predators such as cave lions, leopards, scimitar cats, wolves, cave hyenas, with cave bears as intermittent participants. Prey would have been scant.3 To survive, humans had to usurp a significant amount of prey away from other predators, as well as kill regularly when the demand arose. Food procurement had to be predictable. Therefore, what humans killed had to be at the expense of other apex predators, despite the severe competition.