page_title: Cave bear
section_title: Relationship with humans
hierarchical_section_title: Cave bear / Relationship with humans
caption_attribution_description: Dansk: Vægtegning i hulen Combarelles, Dordogne (vild hest, hulebjørn, mammut, huleløve). English: Wall drawing in the cave Les Combarelles in Dordogne (wild horse, cave bear, mammoth, cave lion).
context_page_description: The cave bear was a species of bear that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 24,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum.
  Both the word "cave" and the scientific name spelaeus are used because fossils of this species were mostly found in caves. This reflects the views of experts that cave bears may have spent more time in caves than the brown bear, which uses caves only for hibernation.
context_section_description: Between the years 1917 and 1923, the Drachenloch cave in Switzerland was excavated by Emil Bächler. The excavation uncovered more than 30,000 cave bear skeletons. It also uncovered a stone chest or cist consisting of a low wall built from limestone slabs near a cave wall with a number of bear skulls inside it. Also, a cave bear skull was found with a femur bone from another bear stuck inside it. Scholarship speculated that this was proof of prehistoric human religious rites involving the cave bear, or that the Drachenloch cave bear were hunted as part of a hunting ritual or that the skulls were kept as trophies. In Archaeology, Religion, Ritual (2004), archaeologist Timothy Insoll strongly questions whether the Drachenloch finds in the stone cist were the result of human interaction. Insoll states that the evidence for religious practices involving cave bears in this time period is "far from convincing". He also states that comparisons with the religious practices involving bears that are known from historic times are invalid.
  A similar phenomenon was encountered in Regourdou, southern France. A rectangular pit contained the remains of at least twenty bears, covered by a massive stone slab. The remains of a Neanderthal lay nearby in another stone pit, with various objects, including a bear humerus, a scraper, a core, and some flakes, which were interpreted as grave offerings.
  The unusual finding in a deep chamber of Basura Cave in Savona, Italy, is thought to be related to cave bear worship, as there is a vaguely zoomorphic stalagmite surrounded by clay pellets. It was apparently used by Neanderthals for a ceremony; bear bones scattered on the floor further suggests this was likely to have had some sort of ritual purpose.
caption: Cave bear (upper right) along with other animals depicted in rock art from the Les Combarelles cave
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