Cave Bears – The War for Habitation
`The longest war ever fought by humans was not fought against other humans, but against another species — Ursus spelaeus, the Cave Bear. For several hundred thousand years our stone age ancestors fought pitched and bloody battles with these denizens of the most precious commodity on earth — habitable caves. Without these shelters homo sapiens would have had little chance of surviving the Ice Ages, the winter storms, and the myriad of hungry predators that lurked in the dark.
The cave bears, Ursus spelaeus and their cousins Ursus deningeri, were fierce, 20-foot long versions of Grizzly bears with huge teeth and razor sharp claws. Until Neanderthals, and the later Cro-magnons appeared on the scene in Europe and the Mid-east, these giant beasts infested every cave from sea level to altitudes near 10,000 feet. [..]’
