of the bear

ROBERT BEAR CLAW

OF THE BEAR JOURNEYS

OF THE BEAR

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THE WORLD’S OLDEST SOCIETY

For 24 years, between 1903 and 1927, archaeologist Emil Bachler discovered three of the most extraordinary caves in some of the highest and most inaccessible peaks of the European Alps. Two of the caves were found at 7000 feet above sea level; they were named Wildkirchi cave (‘Wild Church Cave’) and Wildermanisloch cave (the ‘Wild Man Cave’). The third cave was called Drachenloch (the ‘Dragon’s

Cave’) and was located at over 8000 feet in the Austrian Alps. The difficulty in reaching these caves cannot be stressed too strongly.

Inside the Wildermanisloch Cave and the Drachenloch Cave, Bachler found many bear skulls placed carefully in cave niches.

“Some of these skulls had little stones arranged around them; others were set on slabs; one, which had been very carefully placed, had the long bones pushed through the orbits of its eyes.”

Also discovered in Drachenloch were some carefully dressed stone slabs that had been set in the floor and covered with a thick 4-1/2 inch limestone slab. Inside this stone ‘chest’ were seven well-preserved bear skulls with a number of long bones. Most amazing is the fact that these finds were dated to between 50,000 and 75,000 B.C.

This clearly suggests a religious ritual of sorts, one which was based upon the Bear. This also makes the tradition of the Bear and the individuals linked to the caves as the oldest ‘religious’ society in the world (to date).

While many archaeologists favor this religious interpretation, there are some who believe that the placement of the bear skulls in niches in the wall, along with the small carefully placed small stones surrounding the skulls and the skulls in the stone ‘chest’ in the floor, were all due to natural causes: ice flows, wind, actual bear inhabitants of the cave, and birds or other foraging animals. In short, Mother Nature’s forces and her winged creatures carefully placed skulls in one the most remote parts of highest peaks of the European Alps.

Archaeologist Herbert Kuhn stated: ‘The location of the sites in remote caves, where they could be most readily concealed, indicated their reference to a cult; and so it immediately occurred to their excavators that they were uncovering the evidence of a sacrificial offering, storage places of the cave-bear skulls used in