Europe
Page 18
I can imagine those earliest performances, watched in awe by a small band in the dark of a winter night. Some may have seen the master craftsman labour over the great lion-person, and now it would come to life—in the form of a shadow cast on a cave wall. The silhouette sharpens and fades as the carving is moved before the flames of the hearth, its maker grunts in perfect imitation of the ancestor—a human-lioness in oestrus. The hybrid beast is hunting—for a human mate. Did the watchers retain a folk memory that they themselves resulted from a mating of different types: a black human and a pale Neanderthal?
From fear, apprehension and wonder, the mood changes as the sounds of the flute drift through the cavern, and the voice of the patriarch rings out. From his throat come imitations of the voices of the departed, telling of the clan’s lion ancestors. Enchanted, the audience is transported to another time, another dimension. And so the long nights are spent, in the world of the first European mythology.
Having achieved their auto-domestication, the early human–Neanderthal hybrids set out to extend the achievement to the domestication of another species. One day, about 26,000 years ago, an eight-to-ten-year-old child and a canine walked together into the rear of Chauvet Cave in what is now France. Judging from their twin tracks, which can be traced for 45 metres across the cave floor, their route took them past the magnificent art for which Chauvet Cave is famous and into the Room of Skulls—a grotto where many cave bear skulls are preserved. They walked together, companionably and deliberately, the child slipping once or twice, as well as stopping to clean a torch, in the process leaving a smear of charcoal on the cave floor. It’s nice to think that the pair’s Huck Finn-like exploration became the stuff of legend in their clan, for at the time Chauvet Cave’s recesses had been abandoned, its art and cave bear bones already thousands of years old. And soon thereafter a landslide would seal the cave entrance. Whatever the case, the pair’s adventure certainly became famous in 2016, when a large dating program of fossils and artefacts from Chauvet Cave, which included the smear of charcoal discarded by the child, confirmed that the tracks constitute the oldest unequivocal evidence of a relationship between humans and canines.2*
DNA studies indicate that dogs started to differentiate from wolves in Europe between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago.3 The oldest osteological evidence is a canid skull dating to 36,000 years ago, which was found in Goyet Cave, Belgium. It is short-snouted and broad, characteristics that distinguish it from wolves—but genetic analysis places it outside the lineages of all living dogs and wolves. The skull may well have been from a group of canids that had a relationship with humans, and which subsequently became extinct. Whatever the case, Signor-Lipps warn us that children and dogs may have been associating long before this child and its canid companion strolled through Chauvet Cave 26,000 years ago.
Neanderthals and wolves had coexisted for hundreds of thousands of years—at least since the first grey wolves arrived in Europe from Asia between 500,000 and 300,000 years ago (the oldest evidence comes from cave deposits at Lunel Viel, in France).4 And modern humans and wolves had coexisted at least since Homo sapiens spread out from Africa 180,000 years ago. But it was not until the creation of the human–Neanderthal hybrids 38,000 years ago that canines and hominids began an association. One popular theory of canid domestication is that wolves began hanging around human campsites, hoping for scraps from kills or feeding on faeces, and that this led to a relationship. But it is more likely that domestication originated with the adoption of young animals, as still occurs today in many hunter-gatherer societies. Adoption usually occurs when a hunter kills a female accompanied by dependent young, which are brought back to camp, where they become playthings for children. In the case of wolves, it only works if the pups are no more than 10 days old, at which stage they are still in the den. If they can survive from scavenged scraps, perhaps along with breastmilk donated by a lactating mother, they may grow to adulthood. In ice-age Europe, lion and bear cubs as well as wolf pups doubtless made it into human camps as children’s playthings, and, occupational health and safety not being what it is today, disasters must have occasionally befallen the adopting families. But wolves are more suitable as human companions.
A multi-decadal experiment on foxes (which are members of the dog family), carried out under the supervision of Russian geneticist Dmitry Belyayev from the 1950s onwards, has yielded important insights into the nature of the ancestral dog. Belyayev’s method was simple: of the thousands of silver foxes held at a Soviet fur farm he selectively bred those that were calmer in the presence of humans. After just a few generations some foxes started to seek out human company. Breeding with these individuals resulted in foxes that showed changes in reproduction typical of domesticated animals (which often bear more than one litter per year). A few even began to wag their tails and bark—characteristics otherwise seen only in dogs. Eventually foxes were produced that had varied colour patterns, curly tails and floppy ears. A few even commenced vocalising with a sound reminiscent of human laughter. None of this was selected for—the only selection being for their level of comfort around humans. Yet, over a few decades Belyayev created foxes that behaved like domestic dogs, and were indeed suitable to keep as pets.5
Wolves have always had a spectrum of behaviours, from timid to aggressive, so we cannot look solely to Belyayev to explain why domestication began 37,000 years ago. I suspect that it occurred then because human–Neanderthal hybrids were the first hominids to bring puppies back to camp with the intent, not of eating them, but allowing them to become playthings.
Between the Chauvet footprints and the first widely accepted evidence of a domestic dog—the 14,000-year-old jawbone buried in a human grave in Germany—there is a wide gap.6 The jaw indicates the beginning of a long tradition of the interment of dogs with people, which reveals a deep attachment between some people and canids. By 4000 years ago the first domestic breeds (which were greyhound-like) had emerged, and dogs were on the way to becoming the highly modified creatures that many of us live with today. It’s as if the human–Neanderthal hybrids of 38,000–14,000 years ago were happy to coexist with wolf-like dogs, while later peoples preferred more modified types of canine companions.
It has recently been proposed that a second group of wolves were domesticated independently in China or in southeastern Asia.7 Several factors make this theory difficult to test, one being that genetics provide no clear guide because no living dogs are more closely related genetically to the wolves of any particular region than any other dogs, probably because of a repeated mixing of dog and wolf genes. And in the millennia since the first domestication, breed selection has further scrambled the dog genome, making it difficult to pinpoint geographic origins. The archaeological record is of only modest assistance in clarifying things: we have fossils of dogs dating back 36,000 years in Europe, 12,500 years in east Asia, but only 8000 years in central Asia. The 4500-year-long difference in dates might be evidence that dogs did not reach east Asia from Europe and were domesticated independently there. But Signor-Lipps may also have something to say about that.
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* The footprints have been indirectly dated by radiocarbon-dating some charcoal that is presumed to have fallen from the child’s torch.
CHAPTER 28
Of Assemblages and Elephants
When humans arrived in Europe, an already chilled Earth was becoming more intensely cold. The substantial ice caps had lowered sea levels by 80 metres below today’s level. In the millennia thereafter, the glaciers would wax so thick, and sprawl so far, that sea levels would drop by a further 40 metres. As a result, there was no Baltic Sea, and you could have walked from Norway to Ireland, even if it meant crossing ice and a few rivers. The cooling was fast by geological standards, but it would have been imperceptible to anyone living, being at least 30 times slower than the warming trend that we are currently experiencing courtesy of greenhouse-gas pollution. It was, nonetheless, forcing changes in the abundance and di
stribution of flora and fauna across Europe.
After the glacial advance that occurred around half a million years ago, many European animals came to exist as two related or ecologically similar types—one of which dominates in the cold phases, and the other during the warm periods that have prevailed just 10 per cent of the time over the past million years. The woolly mammoth and Europe’s straight-tusked elephant are such a pair, as are the woolly rhino and Europe’s extinct forest rhinos. The carnivores were not as likely to split as the herbivores because they were better able to cope with a variety of climates by sheltering in caves. The spotted hyena, for example, was once distributed from the edge of Europe’s polar desert to equatorial Africa.
Europe’s mammals are described by scientists as comprising faunal assemblages—groups of species that typically occur together. Let’s look at five large creatures from Europe’s ice-age, warmth-loving faunal assemblage: the straight-tusked elephant, two rhinoceroses, the hippopotamus, and a water buffalo. The largest of these was the straight-tusked elephant, which first reached Europe from Africa around 800,000 years ago. They could grow to be very large indeed; one male is estimated to have weighed 15 tonnes, which is half as large again as the biggest elephant living today.
Europe’s straight-tusked elephants probably had a herd structure similar to that of other elephants, in which females and young live in small groups, while the larger males were either solitary or congregated in bachelor herds. Straight-tusked elephants could be found in forest and more open habitats, including the warmth-loving oak forests and varied vegetation types that continue to grow around the Mediterranean and in southern and central parts of Europe today. It’s reasonable to suppose that, were they still around and left unmolested by hunters, Europe’s straight-tusked elephants would thrive in forests from Germany to Sicily, and from Portugal to the shores of the Caspian Sea.
The European straight-tusked elephant was long classified in an extinct genus, Palaeoloxodon, the various species of which could once be found from western Europe to Japan and east Africa. But in September 2016 researchers announced that they had successfully extracted DNA from the bones of a 120,000-year-old straight-tusked elephant from Germany and identified its nearest relative, Loxodonta cyclotis—the African forest elephant.1 Africa has two elephant species—the rainforest-dwelling type, and the more familiar and widespread savannah elephant—which split between five and seven million years ago. When the full research findings of this work were published in February 2018 the story got even more astonishing. Genes from an ancestor to both African elephant species comprise the largest element in the European straight-tusked elephant genome, with the next largest contribution (between 35 and 39 per cent) coming from the African forest elephant, and much smaller contributions from both the woolly mammoth and African elephant. The European straight-tusked elephant is thus a complex hybrid.2
Pulling all the data together, it seems likely that the European straight-tusked elephant arose in Africa before today’s living African species separated. Then, at some time before 800,000 years ago, it hybridised extensively with the African forest elephant. Finally, limited interbreeding with both the woolly mammoth and the African elephant occurred. Just how the taxonomists will classify such a creature is yet to be resolved.*
Both European straight-tusked elephants and African forest elephants have long straight tusks; those of older African forest males almost touch the ground. This contrasts with the curved tusks of Asian and other African elephants, and mammoths. The straight-tusked elephants include both the largest and smallest of all elephants. The largest living African forest elephants can reach six tonnes in weight, but the ‘pygmy’ elephant living in the Congo averages just 900 kilograms when adult. European straight-tusked elephants could weigh as much as 15 tonnes, but some island-dwelling forms were pig-sized.
It seems almost unbelievable, but until 2010, scientists did not know that the two living African elephants were distinct species. But 110 years earlier, one of the most eccentric zoologists of all time, Paul Matschie, had identified the African straight-tusks as different. Matschie started his career as a volunteer at the Berlin Zoological Gardens, and, despite his lack of formal qualifications, in 1895 was appointed its curator of mammals. In the habit of wearing pince-nez glasses and sporting a splendid moustache, by 1924 Matschie had become that august institution’s director.
Over the years of working with zoo animals, Matschie developed his own highly unusual theory of classification. Known as ‘the theory of the half-sided bastards’, it declared that each major watershed on Earth harbours a distinct species of any given kind of animal. If the animals living in the watersheds ever met on the ridges dividing them, the creatures might hybridise. Such hybrids could be recognised as ‘half-sided bastards’, because they would resemble one parent on one side of their head, and the other parent on the other.
I can imagine Matschie’s underlings coming to ‘Herr Director’ with the odd goat that had one horn straighter than the other, or a deer with one antler more elaborate than the other, or indeed an elephant with one tusk straighter than the other, hoping to curry favour. Such novelties may well have encouraged Matschie until his bizarre theory became an unshakeable foundation stone of his thinking. Indeed, on the joyous occasion that an unusual skull with asymmetrical horns or tusks turned up, Matschie celebrated by describing two new species based on the one specimen—one for each supposed unknown parent species, which he reasoned must still be lurking in their unexplored catchments. It is easy to understand why much of Matschie’s work was ignored. Yet who would have believed that, when it came to straight-tusked elephants, the truth was even more fantastical?
Perhaps one day Europeans will decide to return elephants to their continent. If so, they would be well served by starting with forest elephants from Africa. But they should not wait too long as the beasts are becoming increasing endangered. Part of the problem is their slow rate of reproduction. Straight-tusked elephants take about 23 years to reach sexual maturity, and thereafter give birth only once every five or six years. The African savannah elephant, in contrast, matures at about twelve years and can give birth every three to four years. The slower the reproductive rate, the more impact hunting has. Between 2002 and 2013, 65 per cent of the African forest elephant population was killed, mostly by poachers seeking ivory. At that rate, extinction will occur in the next few decades.
Many people find the prospect of elephants wandering the forests of Europe ridiculous, or even dangerous. Yet they accept that Africans must share their homes with the ponderous creatures. I think that we should take the long view and share the burden of conservation more equally. But bureaucracies keep getting in the way. The IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature), for example, restricts use of the word ‘reintroduction’ to species that have become extinct locally or Europe-wide no more than 200 to 300 years ago. Just why this is I cannot imagine, but I urge the IUCN to appoint more palaeontologists to its committees!
What drove Europe’s straight-tusked elephants to extinction? We can never be certain, but we can look at patterns of climate, predation and distribution. Fossils reveal that as the ice-age gripped the continent, straight-tusked elephants retreated to the warmer southern peninsulas of Spain, Italy and Greece. This would have limited their overall population size and divided it into sub-populations that could not easily intermix, making them more vulnerable to extinction. Straight-tusked elephants doubtless had their predators too, with lions and spotted hyenas taking the odd calf. There’s also good evidence that the Neanderthals hunted them. A 400,000-year-old straight-tusked elephant skeleton found in the Ebbsfleet Valley near Swanscombe in Kent was surrounded by stone tools indicating that it had been butchered, while marks on the bones of a second individual found in Britain suggest that it had been cut up. In both cases, however, it’s possible that the Neanderthals were scavenging from a carcass. But a third skeleton, found near Lehringen, Germany, was found lying on a 125,00
0-year-old wooden stabbing lance, which appears to have been used to kill it.3 Several other elephant skeletons have been found alongside stone tools in Spain, Italy and Germany, so it seems safe to say that Neanderthals could kill adult straight-tusked elephants.
Fossils suggest that straight-tusked elephants made their last stand on the European mainland in Spain, about 50,000 years ago. This is curious: 50,000 years ago, the ice had not yet fully extended and substantial areas of forest persisted. Indeed, conditions were not greatly different from those of previous glacial advances that the elephants had endured. Could it be that straight-tusked elephants survived longer on mainland Europe? It is a question that Signor-Lipps have a firm opinion on. And, indeed, a single 37,000-year-old image of a furless elephant from Chauvet Cave, France, may depict this species.
Europe’s straight-tusked elephants survived on various islands in the Mediterranean for thousands of years after they vanished from mainland Europe. All of the island populations were dwarfs, some being very tiny indeed. Cyprus’s straight-tusked elephants, for example, were only a metre high at the shoulder and weighed a mere 200 kilograms. These tiny elephants survived until about 11,000 years ago, and they shared the island with the smallest hippo known, Phanourios minor, which was the size of a sheep. Cyprus was settled by humans at least 10,500 years ago, and the campsites of these early Cypriots have been discovered in caves at Aetokremnos (Vulture’s Cliff) on the Akrotiri Peninsula.4 The bones of hippos are found in layers immediately below the human camps, but it is not known with certainty whether humans hunted the hippos, or indeed the elephants. The island of Tilos in the Dodecanese may have offered a last refuge. Its elephants, which averaged two metres high at the shoulder, survived until about 6000 years ago. This date, however, deserves further investigation, for Tilos supported a population of humans for thousands of years before that—and, at least on small islands, the archaeological evidence from elsewhere suggests that humans and elephants don’t coexist.