The bears took a long time to go, but eventually modern man drove them out of their caves.
People have begun to look at cave bear DNA, and it tells a fascinating story. It appears that the poor old cave bear began to experience hard times about fifty thousand years ago, and they struggled for another thirty thousand years – becoming extinct around twenty thousand years ago.
Cave Bears and Neanderthal Man
Neanderthals probably liked them – or at least worshipped them. Collections of skulls in caves show that the cave bear was important to the people, and it is just possible that the Neanderthals lived in the cave mouth while the bears hibernated deep inside.
Cave Bears and Cro Magnon Man
Then along came Cro Magnon man – whatever that was – and he out-competed the bear. He wanted the whole cave, especially the deeper recesses where he liked to paint on the walls!
Cro Magnon man painted animals in great detail; he obviously knew them well. At Lascaux there are more than 900 animal paintings. Over 600 can be identified precisely, and most are of horses – but there is a cave bear! What was this all about?
Chauvet cave (a bit older than Lascaux at 30,000 years BP, but also Cro Magnon) also has paintings, and there is a nice bear there too, along with many other 'non-food', predatory beasties – like lions. What were they doing, or trying to say?
Early interpretations of the paintings suggest some sort of 'hunting magic', but if you can't eat them why paint them? Maybe it was more about recording what was there, and what was important. Neanderthals had probably held the cave bear in great esteem, and surely Cro Magnons – gradually taking over Neanderthal sites – would have picked up on this. Maybe cave bears were nice, but not when they interfered with painting?
For whatever reason, the increase in Cro Magnon population seems to coincide with the decline of cave bears.
Cave Bear Extinction
Stiller, Grandal d'Anglade et al. (Molecular Biology and Evolution) say that 'the decline of cave bears started approximately 25,000 years before their extinction' – in other words they were not wiped out by Cro Magnon man, but rather – gradually 'pushed out'. Cave bears needed deep caves to hibernate in and survive the winter, but the modern humans liked to go in there and paint.
Cro Magnon man seems to have had little time for cave bears; of the many (900+) paintings at Lascaux there is only one cave bear. At Chauvet the dissonance is clear – Cro Magnons were not especially interested in cave bears. Neanderthals might well have worshipped them, but Cro Magnons saw them just as one more animal.
Studying mitochondrial DNA from cave bear remains Grandal d'Anglade says that 'The decline in the genetic diversity of the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) began around 50,000 years ago' and that 'This can be attributed to increasing human expansion and the resulting competition between humans and bears for land and shelter'.
We didn't actually kill cave bears off – just moved into their homes and drove them out.
References:
Mathias Stiller, Aurora Grandal d'Anglade et al. '25,000 Years of Genetic Decline Preceded Cave Bear Extinction' Molecular Biology and Evolution
'True cause for extinction of cave bear revealed' LabSpaces