nearby caves (b, c), led scientists to claim that the Goyet skeleton is from a 36,000-year-old dog. This image is reproduced courtesy of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Science and Wilfred Miseur. (The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Science, Wilfrid Miseur)
If wolves and humans were discovering the mutual advantages of hunting together, perhaps one might expect wolves to feature prominently in the images at Chauvet, Goyet and elsewhere. Yet they are conspicuously absent from these murals. The only wolf-like image from this area is a crude outline from the Dordogne, at Font-de-Gaume, an area rich in limestone caves with a long history of prehistoric human occupation, both Neanderthal and modern. The drawing is among over 200 images of contemporary animals, including the usual suspects like mammoth, bison and woolly rhinoceros, and dates to around 17,000 years BP. Other than this, there are no depictions of wolves at Font-de-Gaume or in any nearby caves. The other notable subject about from these cave paintings is ourselves. There are no images of humans anywhere to be seen. Why not? It is as if the taboo our ancestors felt about creating a human image also extended to the wolf.
I am reminded of Conan Doyle’s short story ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, concerning the theft of a prize racehorse and the murder of its trainer. In solving the crime, Sherlock Holmes explains to Inspector Gregory of Scotland Yard that the dog guarding the stables must have recognised the culprit.
‘Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?’ asks Gregory.
‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time,’ replies Holmes.
‘The dog did nothing in the night-time,’ responds Gregory.
‘That was the curious incident,’ replies Holmes.
9
Why Didn’t Shaun Ellis Get Eaten by Wolves?
If there was anything in the notion of an ancient pact between man and wolf that preceded ‘domestication’ then the best way to find out was to meet some wolves.
In my research for this book I had read an account by a man who had managed to forge a great friendship between himself and a pack of wild wolves. Although very far removed from the Upper Palaeolithic when we, I imagined, first began to hunt with wolves, I wondered whether the basic instincts on which that relationship was based would still be there.
Shaun Ellis, the co-author of The Man who Lives with Wolves, describes how, as a young man, he had become instantly entranced by the sight of a captive wolf.1 Shaun’s transforming experience had happened in a wildlife park near Thetford, not far from his childhood home in Norfolk. The brief encounter changed Shaun’s life entirely and led him eventually to devote himself to wolves. He moved to the USA to work as a volunteer at a wolf rehabilitation centre in Idaho and later set out on his own to find and live among a wild wolf pack.
I heard that he had returned from Idaho and, now in his early forties, was living on a farm in Cornwall. I knew I needed to meet Shaun as soon as possible and, if he would allow it, interview him. Fortunately, he agreed, and on a cold and dark Friday in December, my wife Ulla and I set off on the long train journey to Lostwithiel, where Shaun and his partner Kim now live in the company of a small pack of wolves. We settled into the cosy parlour of the farmhouse, at least partially revived with a hot cup of tea.
I began by asking Shaun about his childhood on his grandfather’s farm deep in the Norfolk countryside, leading up to that first encounter with the wolf. An only child, Shaun had been raised mainly by his grandparents, his mother having to work full-time to support the family. His grandfather in particular had been an important influence, fostering Shaun’s growing love of the outdoors. They took frequent walks together with their dogs in the woods and across the fields, hunting rabbits. Always a reluctant pupil, Shaun left school at 15 and had various jobs including a spell in the army.
A free and easy man, his life continued with no definite purpose until the day he took a bus to the local zoo in Thetford. Wandering around, he came upon the wolf enclosure. There, only a few metres away, stood a fully-grown wolf looking straight at him. Here, right in front of him, was the savage killer he had been taught to fear. As he stared back into its golden yellow eyes he felt as though it was touching his very soul. It was as if the creature could read his deepest thoughts and somehow understood him better than any human had ever done. In that instant Shaun’s future path through life was fixed. He has devoted himself ever since to understanding and to helping the rest of us to understand and appreciate what these wonderful creatures are really like. He was, however, sufficiently self-aware to realise that the wolf probably looked at every visitor in the same way.
No matter, over the next years Shaun’s life revolved entirely around wolves. Lacking any professional qualifications and viewed with suspicion by some professional biologists, Shaun has lived with wolves, has brought up a family of wolves, and in the process he felt as though he had almost become a wolf himself. For two years he was alone with a pack of wild wolves in the forests of Idaho. He had travelled to that part of America to work at a wolf education centre where a captive pack was kept in order to educate visitors and to disabuse them of the wolf’s thoroughly undeserved reputation for savagery. After a while Shaun realised that he could never really understand the enigmatic animal only by working with captive wolves, so he packed his rucksack and set off alone into the forest.
Shaun knew there were wolves living there – they migrated every year down from Canada and across Montana into Idaho. But he did not know exactly where they would be. Three months passed before he saw any sign of a wolf. Then, one day, he saw the unmistakable paw print of a large male in the soft mud by the side of a waterhole. In the weeks that followed he heard the chilling chorus of a howling pack drifting through the night.
Eventually he caught a glimpse of his first wolf, a large black male, as it crossed the track some hundred metres ahead. The wolf looked at him briefly before trotting off into the forest. Weeks passed and Shaun saw the black wolf more regularly as if it were sizing him up, whether as a meal or a mere curiosity he could not be certain. A few weeks later, the black wolf reappeared with four others, two males and two females – a real pack. Slowly, day by day, week by week, the wolves became more confident until one day the big male came up to Shaun, sniffed him and suddenly nipped him just below the knee.
Although it was painful, Shaun knew from his experience with captive wolves that this was not a bite in anger. Rather like shaking hands, it was a way for the wolf to introduce himself.
All wolf packs maintain a strict hierarchy. As a rule, only the dominant pair, the alpha male and female, breed, while the other wolves are given supporting roles in the pack. Generally speaking, the other wolves are the siblings and offspring of the alpha pair. Whereas the alpha female is the undisputed leader of the pack, it falls to the beta animals, one rung down in the hierarchy, to maintain discipline and to organise the defence of the pack when it is threatened. It was the beta male, the enforcer, that sized Shaun up and gave him that painful bite, not in anger but as an introduction. The encounters between Shaun and the wolves became more and more frequent over the next weeks. After six weeks he felt that he had been accepted by the pack as an ‘honorary wolf’. He was given the job of what he describes as a diffuser, a calmer of nerves. Like any other family, wolf packs can argue, and they have sharp teeth and claws with which to make a point. Shaun’s role, as he saw it, was to make sure these petty squabbles did not get out of hand.
‘Why,’ I asked him, ‘were you not attacked?’
‘Because I was useful. Also I suspect because the wolves could learn from me, something they needed to do,
