by Tim Flannery
Bone points work differently from those made of flint. Bone can penetrate hide and muscle, and a well-placed strike can cripple an animal if not kill it. But a misplaced hit will allow the prey to escape. Unless it can be tracked and retrieved, it is likely to die some time later of sepsis, out of range of the hunter. About 33,000 years ago, an important innovation in spear-point manufacture occurred. The Gravettian culture (again named for a site in France) flourished across Europe for nearly 10,000 years—until about 22,000 years ago—and its signature innovation was the development of a small, pointed flint blade with a straight, blunt back. It was a specialist tool used to hunt large mammals, including horses, wisent and mammoths, and was capable of causing death through blood loss, which is quicker than death through sepsis. Substantial blood flow had the additional benefit that the wounded beast leaves an ample spoor.
But spear-point innovation did not stop there. In France, northern Spain and possibly Britain, the Gravettian culture was succeeded by the Solutrean culture (named after a fossil site in southeastern France). Among its many achievements are the magnificent art galleries of Lascaux and Altamira, and the development of the eyed needle, which must have revolutionised the making of clothes and thus enhanced the ability to hunt in extreme weather. But the culture is best known for its spear points, which are renowned for their outstanding beauty. Solutrean points were made from flint and other stone selected for its aesthetically pleasing colour or patterning. The points were exquisitely shaped by sophisticated napping—doubtless the work of master craftsmen—being finely worked on both sides to have long, sharp cutting edges.
Solutrean points resemble the canines of the sabre-toothed cats. Indeed, they may have killed in a similar way—by exsanguination. They closely resemble the famed American Clovis points, which are associated with large mammal extinctions across the North American continent. Clovis points were made for just 300 years or so, with production ceasing at about the time the American megafauna disappeared: once the mammoths were gone, people stopped making the points used to hunt them. The manufacture of Solutrean points lasted about 5000 years, but by 17,000 years ago, with the woolly mammoth and woolly rhino in retreat in western Europe, they ceased being made.
The difference in timespan between the manufacture of Clovis and Solutrean points is intriguing. North America’s mammoths had no experience of being hunted by hominids until highly armed human hunters arrived, after which the great beasts were exterminated quickly. Europe’s mammoths, in contrast, after millions of years of hunting by Homo erectus, Neanderthals, humans and hybrids, were wary of upright creatures bearing sticks.
Why then did Europe’s mammoths finally succumb? One answer may lie in the superior speed of cultural evolution over physical evolution. It took millions of years for the canines of sabre-toothed cats to become as large as they eventually did. But it took human spear points just 20,000 years to go from the Aurignacian bone spearhead to the more-deadly Solutrean point. The Red Queen hypothesis defines evolution as a kind of arms race, in which species must constantly evolve and adapt merely to survive. If you can’t evolve fast enough, you become extinct. Mammoths and sabre-toothed cats evolved at the same pace, so the evolutionary arms race was kept in equilibrium. But when modern humans began their great cultural acceleration, large, slow-reproducing prey species had no way to keep pace.
While this account provides a satisfying narrative, there is a problem with the idea that Solutrean points were the deathknell for Europe’s mammoths. A survey of the points found in Spain shows that very few bear fracture marks typical of flint spear points that have been used in hunting. Isabel Schmidt of the University of Cologne believes that this is because Solutrean points were largely symbolic, and not used for hunting.5 There are other instances of such phenomena. The great and majestic Hagen axes of Papua New Guinea are exquisitely wrought and of great value. But they are never used as tools, serving instead to signal the status of their owners. But if Solutrean points did not often end the lives of mammoths and other megafauna, something else did. By the time Solutrean points were being manufactured the creatures were disappearing and given the many past shifts in climate that they had survived, climatic factors alone cannot have been responsible.
The striking similarity between Clovis points and Solutrean points has given rise to an odd theory. Some researchers posit that Solutreans pre-empted the Vikings in crossing the north Atlantic and colonising North America. But no other line of evidence (including genetic studies) supports this. And the dates are wrong. Solutrean points were made between 22,000 and 17,000 years ago, and Clovis points for about 300 years 13,000 years ago. It seems more likely that humans in Europe and North America hit upon a similar solution to the same problem—how to kill great, dangerous, hairy beasts quickly and efficiently—even if in the European case the fine tools eventually took on a largely symbolic value.
A further enigma concerns the disappearance of Europe’s original mammoths about 34,000 years ago—several thousand years before the North American mammoths make their appearance in Europe. It may be that we just don’t have enough samples to tell the full story. But it is intriguing that the extinction occurs at the time when the first Gravettian points were being made—33,000 years ago. Did the Gravettians drive Europe’s last indigenous mammoths into extinction at the ends of their lethal flint points, only to have mammoths of American origin replace them a few thousand years later? And did the Solutreans do the same for the last of southwestern Europe’s mammoths? Given the deficiencies in the fossil record and the lack of focused studies, we cannot know with any certainty. But the patterns are tantalising.
Solutrean points were not made Europe-wide, but were restricted to a region extending from southern England to Spain. About 17,000 years ago the Solutrean culture was replaced by the Magdalenian culture, named for a rock shelter in the Dordogne where their artefacts were first recognised. The Magdalenians hunted a wide variety of prey, including horses, aurochs and fish, and are known for their highly sophisticated bone artefacts, as well as for small flint tools known as microliths, which were mounted together on spears to form a long cutting edge. It is during Magdalenian times that the last of western Europe’s mammoths vanished, and when dogs began to be buried with people. The rapidly evolving Magdalenian culture would, in its many local manifestations, continue until the advent of agriculture.
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* The oldest paintings in the cave are about 33,000 years old, but the oldest habitation levels date to 37,000 years ago. More work is required before a full understanding of the chronology of the site is clear.
CHAPTER 32
The Balance Tips
Rhinos established themselves in Europe more than 50 million years ago, and elephants arrived 17.5 million years ago. They had endured everything from the Messinian crisis to the Anglian glaciation, but beginning about 50,000 years ago they started vanishing, and by about 10,000 years ago they were all extinct on the European mainland. For a century some scientists have waved airily at ‘a change in the climate’ as the cause. But things are not so simple. After decades of research, scientists have assembled an approximate chronology of extinction. On the European mainland, the straight-tusked elephant vanished sometime after 50,000 years ago, though some island populations survived until at least 10,000 years ago. While its extinction on the mainland appears to predate the arrival of humans, Signor-Lipps urge caution.* Europe’s two woodland rhinos—Merck’s and the narrow-nosed—also appear to have become extinct early. Again, we have very few accurately dated fossils, but if the depictions in Chauvet Cave represent a woodland rhino, then it must have survived until at least 37,000 years ago.
The Neanderthals became extinct about 39,000 years ago, after briefly overlapping with human–Neanderthal hybrids. The woolly rhino appears to have become extinct about 34,000 years ago. Next was the cave bear, whose well-documented extinction, at least in the European Alps, occurs about 28,000 years ago. The few dates we have
for the cave hyena indicate that it was the next to go, about 20,000 years ago, and then, about 14,000 years ago, the cave lion vanished from Europe. About 10,000 years ago the last European woolly mammoths and giant elk become extinct, while the muskox died out (in Sweden) 9000 years ago.
EXTINCTION TIMES FOR THE EUROPEAN MEGAFAUNA
Animal Extinction (years ago)
Mainland straight-tusked elephant 50,000
Neanderthals 39,000*
Merck’s rhino 37,000
Narrow-nosed rhino 37,000
Woolly rhino 34,000
Cave bear 28,000
Cave hyena (survives in Africa) 20,000
Cave lion 14,000
Woolly mammoth 10,000
Giant elk 10,000
Muskox (survives in the New World) 9000
Some of these dates may be corrected as more research is done. But the pattern of extinction is not what one would expect if a changing climate was responsible. The most severe cold of the entire glacial cycle occurred 30,000–20,000 years ago, before the ice began collapsing about 16,000 years ago. The large warmth-loving species, including the straight-tusked elephant and the woodland rhinos, should become extinct at the time of maximal cold—but they go earlier. And cold-loving species should become extinct as the warming sets in; but the woolly rhino dies out earlier, while the muskox survives longer. A second curious feature is that only the largest mammals become extinct.* In today’s rapidly warming climate, small creatures such as pikas and saiga antelope, as well as large ones, are declining.
With the extinction of the mammoth about 10,000 years ago, mainland Europe had lost all herbivores that weighed more than 1.5 tonnes, and all its strict carnivores weighing more than 50 kilograms. Megafauna are called ‘keystone species’ because when they become extinct the entire arch of the ecosystem can collapse. In the case of the woolly mammoth and the mammoth steppe, the collapse fits that expectation and has been documented. But elsewhere in Europe, evidence for large-scale ecosystem collapse is lacking. An idea of what should have occurred is provided by Africa: where elephants have been hunted out, the savannah transforms into woodland or even dense forest, forcing all the smaller savanna-living creatures to find habitat elsewhere. In Europe, thick forests briefly re-established following the final retreat of the ice, but within a few thousand years fire-using and axe-wielding humans were replacing elephants as disturbers of vegetation.
Large predators are equally important as keystone species; their removal can allow predators in the next size class down to proliferate. This phenomenon, known as meso-predator release, can have a huge impact on ecosystems. Barro Colorado Island in Panama became an island through the flooding of the Panama Canal. It was too small to support the region’s top predators, jaguars, and the big cats died out. Afterwards, smaller predators became super-abundant and caused the extinction of several bird and mammal species that were important pollinators and seed dispersers. This, in turn, altered the composition of trees in the forest. But Europe’s medium-sized carnivores remained relatively rare after the extinction of the great predators. Again, humans are implicated. We see in archaeological deposits that humans were becoming expert hunters and trappers of carnivores. In effect they were replacing lions and hyenas as suppressors of medium-sized carnivores.
Another consequence of the extinctions can be expected: as in ages past, new kinds of elephants and rhinos should migrate into Europe to replace the extinct types. After all, as the warming set in, the habitable land area of Europe increased enormously, and with greater rainfall and soils revitalised by glacial activity there was increased biological productivity. In previous ice ages these factors triggered mass migrations of mega-mammals into Europe. But at the end of the last ice age the mega-herbivores did not return. The only obvious explanation is that the density of skilled human hunters in Europe was preventing megafaunal recolonisation.
It seems that long before the advent of agriculture, humans had replaced the ecosystem function of all the great beasts of the ice age. By about 14,000 years ago, Europe was already a human-maintained ecosystem. Indeed, the number of humans in Europe had begun to increase greatly. A recent study estimates that 23,000 years ago the human population of Europe was about 130,000, and by 13,000 years ago that number had more than trebled to 410,000.1
Despite the human influence, about 10,000 years ago some surprising invaders arrived in Europe. Western Europe, at least, had been lionless for nearly 5000 years, following the extinction of the cave lion, when prides of a new type of lion stalked in from Africa or western Asia. These were Panthera leo, the only lion species surviving today.* By 10,000 years ago it had reached as far west as Portugal, having colonised France and Italy on the way, and it survived in Iberia for at least 5000 years.2 But as human populations grew, it was pushed eastwards. By Herodotus’s time, west of the Bosphorus lions were plentiful only on the plains of Macedonia and by the last century BCE they had vanished even from there. They survived in Georgia until about 1000 CE, and in eastern Turkey until the eighteenth century; which, incidentally, allows them to fit the exacting standards of the IUCN as candidates for reintroduction to Europe!3
Another surprise invader was the striped hyena. Just as the lion had to some extent usurped the niche of the cave lion, so the striped hyena partially usurped the role of its much larger relative, the spotted hyena. Remains of this species are unknown from Pleistocene deposits in western Europe. It may have migrated out of Africa as recently as Neolithic times (10,200–4000 years ago) and briefly became common in western Europe, particularly in France and Germany, before declining to extinction everywhere except the Caucasus, where it maintains a precarious toehold.4
While animal migrations were few, the pace of human migration picked up. Genetic studies, including those of fossil DNA, show that about 14,000 years ago a group of humans began expanding westwards from what is now Greece and Turkey (though they may have originated further east). They mixed into the European gene pool, and probably displaced some of the original settlers. Consequently, the average amount of Neanderthal DNA in European populations dropped to about two per cent.5
There is evidence that these new people differed in important ways from the original inhabitants, and some telling insights into their culture have been unearthed in Turkey, at Göbekli Tepe, where the world’s oldest ‘temple’ has been discovered. The Göbekli Tepe temple was constructed some 11,500 years ago, a few thousand years after the initial spread of the new migrants into western Europe, but prior to the advent of agriculture. It is likely that the ancestors of the builders of Göbekli Tepe shared a common culture with the migrants who entered Europe at least 14,000 years ago.
The temple at Göbekli Tepe appears to be very different from anything that preceded it, but this may be owing to a bias in preservation. Archaeologists refer to the classical Greek temple form as ‘petrified carpentry’, because stone temples arose from earlier, wooden types, and elements of carpentry techniques are retained in the stone forms. There is doubtless a long tradition, in many cultures, of construction in wood prior to the adoption of stone, and it is to be expected that the builders of Göbekli Tepe were no exception. We can thus anticipate that some of the adaptations seen in the culture that gave rise to Göbekli Tepe had been present in their ancestors at the time they expanded into western Europe.
The temple at Göbekli Tepe is an immense circular form, constructed of stone pillars up to six metres tall and 20 tonnes in weight, which were decorated with relief carvings of animals and stylised humans. This style of carving, in which the image stands out from a flat background, is markedly more difficult than simply incising a design into the stone. It is, however, often used in woodwork, where it is easier to execute, and it seems possible that its use at Göbekli Tepe constitutes an example of ‘petrified carpentry’. The function of the Göbekli Tepe complex is still debated, but the discovery of human cut-marked skull fragments, as well as the bones of birds of prey, suggests that it may have been a pla
ce where the bodies of the deceased were exposed, to be eaten by vultures. A remarkably similar practice survives today among India’s Parsees, who leave their dead in ‘towers of silence’.
The construction of Göbekli Tepe would have demanded a considerable workforce. Among the major tasks were the preparation of the ground, the quarrying and transport of the columns about 800 metres, and then their carving and erection.6 Just how the workers were fed is not known, but it must have required a food abundance. The archaeologists who excavated the site think that the gazelle and aurochs’ bones found in the backfill used to bury the structure are evidence of great meat feasts. But it’s hard to believe that sufficient meat could have been procured from hunted game to sustain such a workforce. Instead, it seems likely that they also ate some type of storable plant food in the form of seedcake or nuts.
Interpretations are necessarily speculative. But it seems possible that the builders of Göbekli Tepe had already embarked on an important phase of development that was a precursor to domestication, and which requires the manipulation of wild resources. This may have involved the selective planting in accessible locations, and the nurture of seedlings of fruit or nut trees that bore especially well. Such trees can take decades to produce large crops, so it’s fair to ask why anyone would plant them if they’re unlikely to live long enough to receive the benefit. But a similar practice continues in Papua New Guinea, where people plant trees that, when mature, are known to attract game animals. I have asked New Guineans why people do this, and they tell me it’s so that their grandchildren will have food.