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Bears of Europe
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A book I am rereading is 'The Bear - History of a Fallen King' by the French historian Michel Pastoureau. He did an indepth study on the bears of Europe ( brown bears ) of ancient times. Bear worship was widespread throughout much of Europe. The bear was the champion of the animal fights in the ancient Roman arena. The bear was the original "king of beasts." The Church, including Charlemagne, the first Christian emperor, declared war against the bear; determined to completely eradicate bears from Europe. This war lasted for centuries and it is surprising that any European brown bears survived at all.
I have learned from Tigerluver and GrizzlyClaws that the Pleistocene brown bears of Europe were quite large, nearing the size of the giant cave bears. I have to believe that, before the massive slaughter of bears during their "dark ages" that the bears of Europe must have been bigger, stronger, and more fierce than those which somehow managed to survive. Any information? 
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Yep, they always killed off the larger ones for their "honor", apparently. Larger and scarred grizzlies (and any other bear species, for that example) are usually stronger and the most aggressive of bears. That is why they were killed in both North America and Europe. They simply made themselves more known. (07-09-2016, 07:13 PM)Polar Wrote: @ All that you say is true; but in Europe during the "middle ages" bears were being exterminated for religious reasons.
An excerpt from the book... Diet was another area that established a kinship between bears and humans. Medieval writers said little about it, although there was one who claimed that bear meat had the same taste as human flesh, but modern scholarship has given it detailed attention. There are indeed very few truly omnivorous animals, and they include bears and men. With respect to the animal, however, certain qualifications are necessary. Not only does its diet vary according to season and location, but also and above all, it has evolved over the centuries: the prehistoric brown bear was clearly carnivorous; the present-day brown bear is largely vegetarian. The long war that men conducted against bears drove it out of many regions, made it a creature of the mountains, and gradually changed its diet, forcing it to replace the flesh of wild or domestic animals with increasingly varied plants.
I have never tried bear meat. But I don't think it would taste the same as human meat as a bear's muscle is denser, quite different in composition, and, depending on the diet, either slightly sweeter or more sour.
But let's just get back to the topic. 
Another excerpt... The bear gradually disappeared from plains areas and became exclusively a mountain animal, coming down only when food was too scarce. At the same time, although the bear remained omnivorous, its diet changed: 80 percent carnivorous in antiquity, the European brown bear was probably only 40 percent carnivorous in the Middle Ages. This evolution, more-over, continued into modern times, so that today something between 85 and 90 percent of the diet of the few brown bears still living in the wild in Europe is vegetarian.
*The books tells of the huge and fierce bears of the past; much unlike our modern European brown bears. I feel certain that a population of bears, living in the forests ( which no longer exists ) and feeding heavily on protein-rich meat were larger and fiercer predators than their descendants living today. I am just curious if anyone should have any data on this topic. |
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