of the humans up on the plateau.
She saw them ambush a wild horse they had deliberately separated from the herd. They had it cornered in a patch of marshy ground below a low bluff where it became trapped in the mud. Two of the humans – there were six in all – climbed the bluff with spears in hand. While the others spread their arms and shouted to confine the horse and prevent it from escaping, the two on the bluff raised their spears and hurled them into the struggling animal. It shuddered and dropped to the ground. All six humans crowded round the stricken beast and drove their spears deep into its chest. Once it was dead they took out stone knives, opened the abdomen and shared the liver between them. They then butchered the rest of the carcass and made their way back down the gorge. Not all their hunts were as successful as this, and more than once over the summer Lupa watched as the exhausted humans made their way home empty-handed.
The first flurries of winter snow fell on the high plateau in August and the reindeer were once again on the move to lower ground. The first snows heralded the best month’s hunting of the year for the wolves. Calves born in May were now almost fully grown but were inexperienced. The wolves knew which routes the animals would take across the undulating plateau and planned to intercept them in the pockets of soggy ground that lay in their path. Lupa led her pack, now nine strong, towards the ambush zone, many kilometres from their home near the top of the gorge. But something was troubling her. She stopped and sniffed the air. There it was again, the same scent she had first encountered at the site where the humans had killed and butchered the wild horse a few weeks earlier. Not only was Lupa’s olfactory sense very acute, she was also able to remember smells for months or even years. She knew very well the pungent scent of the Neanderthals, but this was certainly different, still strong but a little sweeter. Scent always being her primary sense, from now on she would recognise the new humans using her nose rather than her eyes. She scanned the horizon. She could not see any humans. She led her pack onwards.
Suddenly from a small clump of birch trees about twenty metres away an enormous bull aurochs charged out, heading straight for Lupa. These giant beasts, the ancestors of domestic cattle, had very short tempers and were extremely aggressive towards wolves. Lone bulls like this one were worst of all. Wolves knew better than to take on an enraged aurochs. It would take a much bigger pack than Lupa’s to subdue and kill such a giant. Before she had time to organise the rest of the pack, the beast was on her. She just managed to dodge the deadly horns on the first pass and moved backwards out of range. Seeing her in trouble, the first instinct of the rest of the pack was to protect its leader. The alpha male rushed into the attack, attempting to sink his long canine teeth into the beast’s huge neck. With a flick of the bull’s head the wolf was skewered on the aurochs’s left horn. Another flick and the bloodied body was flung to the ground. The other wolves went to attack, still desperate to protect their leader. The thrashing bull caught one of this year’s cubs full in the chest with its back leg then turned and trampled the winded and mewling animal and left it dying on the moss. Lupa herself now joined in, knowing full well that if she was killed or injured the pack was finished.
Just then, two humans appeared downwind over the crest of a low hill. They had been tracking the aurochs. They had heard the commotion and now they saw the reason for it. Standing well back, they took up position and hurled their spears at the snorting bull. The sharpened flint tips found their mark. One spear struck the animal in the flank while another buried itself deep in the beast’s chest, its razor-sharp edge severing the aorta. Blood spurted from the wound and the beast fell to its knees. It lay there quivering and within a few minutes it was dead.
The two humans advanced on the carcass, knives at the ready. They looked up, expecting the wolves to retreat, but instead they held their ground and lay watching in silence. The hunters opened up the animal and removed the steaming entrails. They cut slices from the warm liver and began to eat. When they had taken their fill but before they started to butcher the carcass, the younger of the two hesitated. He had seen how wolves ran down their prey, following them for many kilometres until the animals, weak from exhaustion, could fend them off no longer. Once they were sure the death throes no longer put them in danger of serious injury, the wolves would engulf the dying animal, ripping at the exposed abdomen and disembowelling it. An idea was beginning to form in the mind of the hunter.
Reaching into the ribcage of the fallen aurochs, the younger man ripped out its still-beating heart and tossed it towards the wolves, much to the dismay of his older companion. Still the wolves stayed where they were, their amber eyes fixed on the humans. After a full five minutes Lupa was the first to move, gingerly advancing towards the offered heart. The other wolves watched in silence. Lupa sniffed at the heart, then opened her wide jaws and sliced off a chunk of the left ventricle and began to eat it. Still the others did nothing. After a further five minutes, with an almost imperceptible movement of her ears Lupa sent a silent signal to the rest of her pack. They advanced and tore the rest of the heart to shreds.
When both wolves and humans had gorged themselves on the beast’s entrails they sat there looking at each other. Something passed between them. Was it a spirit message? Was it merely mutual admiration between hunters? Did either of them know what had just happened?
Over the years that followed, wolf and human grew closer together. The next spring, as lines of reindeer moved towards the skyline through purple meadows of crocus and gentian on their way to summer pastures, wolf and human followed to pick off the stragglers. Increasingly easy in each other’s company, they no longer kept their distance and it was not long before they began to cooperate in the hunt. Sensing a weakness among the reindeer, Lupa picked out the target animal in the herd. The pack trotted off in pursuit, with the humans following as best they could. As the isolated deer began to tire, the wolves formed a circle and held it at bay until the humans arrived to kill it with their spears. Because the wolves no longer needed to completely exhaust the animal in order to avoid injury, the chase was over more quickly. For their part, the humans had a static target for their spears. All shared the kill.
An Artist’s recreation of what a collaborative hunt, like Lupa’s, might have looked like. The wolves harry the aurochs, tiring it out, while the humans inflict the killing wounds from a safe distance. (© GraphicaArtis)
Wolf and human benefited from this collaborative hunting, and in the years that followed, long after Lupa had died, both groups learned to adapt and improve it. Wolves began to signal the presence of prey with a low-pitched howl. Humans understood the message and a hunting party set out to join them. Wolves and humans who hunted together prospered at the expense of those who did not. Their numbers increased and gradually the unstoppable current of natural selection spread this symbiosis across the rest of Europe. Eventually some wolves began to live with humans, intermittently at first, then permanently. Their numbers increased even more and, from this beginning, dogs began to evolve.
All this happened a very long time ago in the high and wild country above the Gate of Trajan. That was the start. We have yet to reach the end.
* Named after Roman Emperor Trajan (ruled 98–117 CE) and marking the northern boundary of the Empire.
2
It’s easy to pinpoint the moment when the collective view of how humans and all other animals and plants came to be changed abruptly. On 24 November 1859 the naturalist Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. The main contention of the book, that species were not fixed and could change over time, immediately challenged the predominant view of the Church that all of nature was deliberately and carefully designed
