When Lions Were King

Across the ancient world, people adopted the big cats as sacred symbols of power and protection

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THE WORLD'S WILD LION population is in grave danger. There are only 600 Asiatic lions remaining, all of which live in a wildlife reserve in the Gir Forest in northwest India. And just 23,000 African lions roam the land between the southern edge of the Sahara and northern South Africa. The total number of wild lions worldwide has dropped by more than 40 percent in the last half century. But in the past, lions were among the most geographically widespread animals on Earth. Each ancient culture that encountered lions had its own way of embracing their power, and the big cats became symbols of spirituality, kingship, bloodlust, divinity, and even safety and peace.

RITUALS

Spain

More than 15,000 years ago, a group hunter-gatherers in northern Morf of Spain killed a lion and brought it home. Cave lions (Panthera spelaea) had roamed Europe for at least 400,000 years, but by this time, their numbers were declining as they were forced to compete for prey with an increasing human population. The lion must have been a great prize. Rather than cut up the feline for food at their cave's entrance, as they did with their other prey, the people carried parts of the huge animal 425 feet into the cave, now called La Garma, to an area known as the Lower Gallery. There, archaeologists discovered nine of the animal's phalanges, the part of the paw to which the claws are attached.

The faunal remains in La Garma's Lower Gallery are uniquely well preserved and provide rare evidence of the daily lives of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers and of the animals they interacted with. More than 4,000 mammal bones and fragments have been uncovered in the Lower Gallery, but none more fascinating than the lion's.