Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise

X99Lynx at aol.com X99Lynx at aol.com
Tue Mar 7 06:23:18 UTC 2000


In a message dated 3/6/2000 6:32:12 PM, mclasutt at brigham.net wrote:

>Your (longer) discussion on this matter assumes that PIE was more urbanized
>than not.  I must disagree.  While there was a certain amount of agriculture
>and pastoralism involved, the time dates and locations for PIE suggest a
>culture much more closely tied to the environment than modern communities in
>the Middle East.  Among hunting peoples around the world, there is virtually
>no one in a community who has not seen a large local predator.

I am not sure what "time dates and locations for PIE" you have in mind, but
if you are going to clear forests and shrubland at the rate Bandkeramik did
(pollen deposits reveal where plant forms changed to domesticates), you are
going to run into a similar situation to the one that faced european settlers
for a century in places like Kentucky and Western PA.  And bear remains are
definitely among the fauna found in the trash heaps of these settlements.
And because bears normally do not have high population density (except when
they chase salmon - when they become vulnerable in open areas) and are
vulnerable during hibernation, they can be eradicated from a broad area
rather quickly.  Where winter prevails, agricultural communities rely on
hunting quite a bit.  And in Europe - from the Steppes to the Atlantic -
there were already very effective mesolithic hunting communities - especially
in the territory of TBK, where later Germanic would make the bear/brown
connection prominent.

Once again, Bandkeramik had a very effective trade network and if there was a
market for bear by-products like bear furs, there were probably specialists
who made a living looking for them, along with other wild fauna.  And that
would say that while members of the community might have seen the bear, they
may have seen a lot more of what was left of the bear - while there were
still bears around.

Stefan Georg's turnaround on the taboo (hunter not wanting bear to be
forewarned) does suggest that the taboo might have applied anyway.  Having
engaged in such mesolithic activities, I know that my belief in luck went up
sharply when the trail got cold.

Regards,
Steve Long



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