CHAPTER 7 Man the Destroyer
Rome, 83 ce: On cue, the elevator box with its ingenious, groaning system of gears and pulleys slowly rises, lifting its frenzied burden, a Numidian leopard, to the sandy surface of the arena. Captured five weeks ago by locals who flushed it from a desert ravine, the leopard was driven into a pen, netted, and transported to ship, where it was thrown minimal amounts of meat to keep it hungry and prodded to keep it savage. Now, as it emerges from its underground dungeon into the blinding, early-morning glare on the Colosseum’s floor, the cat’s senses are assaulted by the terrible, swelling roar of awe and anticipation from a crowd of some 50,000 spectators. With perfumed, coiffeured, and hard-faced citizens looking on and grimy, spear-wielding venatores at the ready, the spectacle of slaughter is ready to begin (figure 7.1).
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wenty-three thousand years have passed since the time of the Aurignacians, and the great cats that once inspired awe and admiration have become impressive but disposable symbols of human power and mastery over nature. Beginning with the venatio (symbolic hunting or baiting) of wild Italian animals partly as a religious rite and partly to amuse crowds at the Circus Maximus as early as the third century BCE, the staging of wild-animal combats and deaths became ever grander, more expensive, and bloodier after the Roman Republic became the Empire. For earlier conquerors such as Sulla, Pompey, and Julius Caesar, venationes became an expected and traditional part of a ludus, or game, which they organized and paid for to celebrate a triumph, and for the later emperors, magistrates, and other officials, the costly annual event was a sure way of impressing the masses with their munificence and distracting them from civic problems. In addition to yearly games, special performances (ludi extraordinarii) might also be staged to accompany the dedication of a temple or other public building, and even a wealthy private citizen sometimes entertained the public with a scaled-down game
figure 7.1. Entrance of Numidian leopard into the Colosseum, Rome.
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figure 7.2. Mosaic of Roman venatore in combat with leopard. Source: Photo by A. Salvatore, courtesy of the Villa Borghese, Rome.
for a funeral or other personal occasion. If they had the influence, the citizens’ agents and managers exerted pressure on provincials to organize and help pay in capturing animals for transport to Rome. Foreign animals, known widely as Africanae bestiae (“African beasts”) regardless of their origin were probably rare in games (as opposed to local, European ones) before the beginning of the second century BCE. After this bestiae dentate (“beasts with [dangerous] teeth”)—bears, big cats, and other large carnivorans—became increasingly common in the arena (figure 7.2). Followed later in the day by other events like gladiatorial combat, horse racing, athletic contests, and musical performances, venationes usually took place in the morning hours of the ludi. Obviously fierce and impressive species—whether herbivores like aurochs, bison, and rhinos or carnivorans like bears, wolves and big cats—made the most dramatic impression on the crowds, and these animals were forced to emerge into theatrically constructed shrubbery through side or underground entrances. As drums were beaten and trumpets were blown the confused and desperate animals were goaded into attacking spear-wielding venatores or javelin-wielding iaculatores, who dispatched them. Their deaths might be postponed long enough for a starved besta dentatis to serve as executioner for an army deserter, prisoner of war, or common criminal lashed to a post. Creatures
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commonly perceived by the Romans as natural rivals like boar and bear, hippos and crocodiles, and rhinos and bulls were paired up and, however unwilling, forced to fight each other to the death; even relatively gentle types like giraffes and elephants were sometimes destroyed for the sheer novelty of seeing how they might die by human hands. For the big cats, it remained a curious paradox that while they were honored in some ancient civilizations as symbols of power and majesty, the animals were nevertheless slaughtered for royal sport and to symbolize an individual ruler’s power over nature’s most formidable creatures (plate 10). After the conquest and destruction of Carthage in 146 BCE Rome annexed huge new areas that served as a source of leopards (variae, which included other spotted cats) and lions (leones), and the surrender of the eastern Seleucid Empire territories in 638 BCE made it possible to acquire tigers (tigres), which had formerly only appeared as rare and occasional gifts from that empire and the Indian kingdoms. The entire process of locating, catching, caring for, and transporting the big cats might take months when the source was as far away as Asia Minor (Syria, Iraq, etc.), but once an animal reached a Roman city, the final outcome was usually over in a few days. A typical show that took place in 169 BCE during the Roman Republic is described by the historian Livy, who wrote that at one ludus forty bears, some elephants, and sixty-three Africanae bestiae, in this case lions and leopards, were featured. To celebrate the election of his praetorship in 93 BCE the general Sulla arranged to have one hundred lions let loose in the arena, to probably attack one another before being killed by iaculatores. During the early years of the empire Augustus recorded that in a period of years encompassing twenty-six venationes, some 3,500 Africanae bestiae died, many of which were certainly big cats. Not to be outdone by his predecessor the Emperor Titus, for the dedication of the Colosseum in 80 CE, authorized one hundred days of celebration; on the opening day 5,000 animals are said to have been slaughtered, followed by 3,000 more over the next two days. Long before they were sought for spectacles, however, big cats had been under human pressure since Neolithic times. Although lion and leopard populations in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, including North Africa and Asia Minor, were given some reprieve by the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 CE, they continued to be indirectly threatened in other ways, beginning with habitat loss. Wood and charcoal were practically the only fuels used in the classical and early medieval worlds, and, over the millennia, incalculable amounts of them were used to provide heat, erect buildings, build ships, and make weapons. During Neolithic times the already fragile Mediterranean lands supported diverse ecosystems and fauna, but the widespread razing by the ancient civilizations of the cedar, oak, hawthorn, and walnut forests that had formerly ringed the
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figure 7.3. The destruction of the big cats’ habitats in the Near and Middle East. As suggested by the now barren surroundings of this modern village in northeast Syria, ancient civilizations of the Near and Middle East relentlessly affected big cats directly by hunting and indirectly by eliminating their natural habitats. Once abundant in these regions and in western Asia, lions, leopards, and tigers could not survive when their ranges became increasingly fragmented. Source: Photo courtesy of UNESCO.
coastal areas altered rainfall patterns. Relentless plowing and replowing of land resulted in the windblown loss of soils, creating deserts where there had once been savannas, wetlands, forests, and open woods As a result of habitat loss the ranges of leopard and lion, which in early ancient history had formed a more or less continuous band from Turkey, Greece, and the Balkan countries into India, became seriously reduced and fragmented, and the remaining populations were faced with an ever smaller prey base as settlements expanded (figure 7.3). Their environments having been denuded and rendered incapable of sustaining large ungulate populations, it was inevitable that pantherins would turn increasingly toward the easy prey of domestic cattle, sheep, and goats—setting them on a collision course with growing settlements. In the Mediterranean and adjoining regions, relentless human hunting—both for sport and in defense of domestic herds—for centuries had whittled away at leopards and lions. Whereas in some ancient Indian and northeast Asian traditional ethnic societies these big cats and their occasional predations were tolerated as an integral part of the order of the natural and human cosmos, the pastoral cultures of the Middle and Near East viewed pantherins and other carnivorans as dark entities to be feared and
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eliminated. Following the collapse of the classical world, Middle Eastern peoples experienced widespread migration, disease, and war, as well as changing political, religious, and social orders. New identities were forming and, for poor, agricultural classes, any reverence or appreciation for nature was generally left behind in the hardscrabble struggle for survival from year to year. The loss of an ox, cow, or donkey could mean severe hardship or even economic catastrophe for a family. The wilderness that lay beyond the fields was to be mistrusted, if not feared outright, and all carnivorans were now enemies. By 100 BCE Asiatic lions were mostly gone from Mesopotamia, northern Greece, and Macedonia but survived in Palestine until about the time of the Crusades, 1095–1291 CE; small pockets hung on in Syria, Iraq, and Iran until well into the twentieth century. In spite of their gradual decline and extinction in these areas lions, leopards, and cheetahs were still common in savanna and open woodlands in subSaharan Africa as late as the end of the nineteenth century. In western Asia smaller numbers of the same three cat species shared the region, although not the same habitats, with Caspian tigers. Unlike those of Europe and the Near and Middle East, India, and China the natural ecosystems in most of the rest of western Asia were still largely intact and unspoiled before historic times because of smaller population growth, high human mortality, and less intensive land use. The comparative refuge these regions provided for big cats and other wildlife abruptly changed with the advent of Western colonialism and modern guns. As in previous centuries hunting was, as it had always been, a common recreation for historic ruling classes such as the Assyrians, the Moghuls, and much later royals who thought nothing of killing huge numbers of animals as status symbols during a single hunt (figure 7.4). For occupying Western colonialists, the faunal richness of Africa and Asia was considered to be an inexhaustible source of game for recreational hunting, and the terrible efficiency of European rifles made it possible to kill more animals than ever before. This was the mark of a hunter’s status, and no kill rated more highly than a big cat. In colonial India “the bag” was a major preoccupation not only for maharajahs, British military brass, and civil authorities but also for many expatriate civil servants during the long hill-station summers. Hundreds of tigers, leopards, and lions were shot every year in India and Africa, with no consideration as to age or gender (figure 7.5). The largest and most impressive were removed from the gene pool to end up as trophies on walls. As early as the 1870s, however, in parts of colonial India some hunters began to notice a decline in game, with J. Baldwin remarking in 1877, “In former years tigers were doubtless a scourge, now they are becoming rare even in the wooded parts of the country. . . . Where once a dozen could be shot by a party . . . two or three will now only be bagged” (quoted by Schaller in The Deer and the Tiger: a Study of Wildlife in India).
figure 7.4. Nineteenth-century British hunting party with bag of tiger corpses. Source: Photographer unknown. Courtesy of Panthera.
figure 7.5. Regimental photo of young British officers and their trophies. Source: Photographer unknown. Courtesy of Panthera.
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Probably because of India’s smaller geographic size and larger rural human populations, the decline in big cats and wildlife in general was at first more apparent there than in Africa, and acts by the British authorities, although only nominal, were passed to protect animals from excessive shooting in 1887, 1912, and 1935. Later, wildlife reserves including the Banjar Valley Reserve, Corbett National Park, and Kaziranga Sanctuary were established but, part because of governmental disinterest in controlling hunting, pantherins still declined. In spite of this, India retained much of its wildlife until 1947 when independence brought with it a wholesale slaughter, in part a reaction to colonial repression. In response to food shortages, guns were issued to farmers, who shot huge numbers of wild ungulates like blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra) as crop pests and domestic-animal competitors, bringing a formerly common species to the point of extermination. Indiscriminate night hunting from vehicles became common. At the same time, habitat destruction intensified with population expansion, domestic animals’ overgrazing, exhaustive plowing, and forest cutting for cultivation and railroad ties, rendering once virgin grasslands, forest, and jungle into arid tracts of thorn woodland and desert. As a result the Indian subcontinent has lost about 75 percent of its native forests, much of it tiger and leopard habitat (figures 7.6, 7.7). By the 1950s the national and state governments, aided by private and provincial conservation groups, slowly began to address the issue, establishing a number of small but significant reserves that, although still beset by poaching, wood gathering, and other illegal activities, are still the nuclei for protecting tigers, leopards, lions, and other remnants of India’s once rich natural heritage. Whether they come from India or not, tigers have for millennia had the unhappy distinction of having body parts that are falsely considered antidotes to erectile dysfunction and other human failings. Any part of a tiger is avidly sought after, and extensive black markets still operate to supply these (see chapter 8). Partly because of its vast extent and partly because of a more enlightened colonial administration, the largest and most diverse savanna and open woodlands of Africa fortunately received reasonably effective if uneven protection beginning in the late nineteenth century. Africa’s first national park was established in 1925 when Albert I of Belgium designated an area of the Virunga Mountains as the Albert National Park (since renamed Virunga National Park) in what is now Democratic Republic of Congo. In 1926, the government of South Africa designated Kruger National Park as that nation’s first, although it was an expansion of the earlier Sabie Game Reserve established in 1898 by President Paul Kruger to forestall the excessive hunting of lions. The Serengeti National Park in Tanzania followed in 1951. By the mid-twentieth century there was a major cultural shift; localities that had long been popular hunting destinations now became tourist attractions for photographic safaris. By the time the sub-Saharan nations
P.t. altaica
P.t. virgata † P.u. uncia P.u. irbis P.u. unciodies Range overlap ? P.t. amoyensis
† = extinct
P.t. tigris P.t. corbetti
P.t. jacksoni
Tiger (Panthera tigris)
Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia)
Historic range
Historic range
Contemporary range
Contemporary range
Known populations
Known populations
P.t. sumatrae P.t. sondaica †
P.t. balica †
Assumed historic tiger/snow leopard range overlap?
figure 7.6. Map of Asia, showing historic and contemporary tiger/snow leopard range. Source: Modified from Wheeler and Jefferson (2009).
P. p. pardus
P. p. nimr
P. p. saxicolor †
P. p. kotiya
† = extinct
Known populations
P. p. orientalis
P. p. melas
P. p. delacouri
P. p. japonensis
Contemporary range
Historic range
Common Leopard (Panthera pardus)
P. p. fusca
P. p. sindica †
figure 7.7. Map of Africa/Eurasia, showing historic and contemporary common leopard range. Source: Modified from Panthera (2009).
P. p. tulliana †
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gained independence in the late 1950s and 1960s, the value of the game parks to national economies was well recognized, and their importance was later ingrained into the awareness of Western cultures through popular books and films. Today, habitat loss, the invasion of wild areas for domestic animal grazing, large-scale killing for “bush meat,” and foreign cultural demand for rhino horn and elephant ivory are the most immediate threats to African wildlife, followed by pressure from agriculturalists to have access to natural land and by militarists who profit from large-scale, organized poaching. While they are in the game parks, lions and leopards are reasonably secure but are subject to shooting and poisoning when they venture outside the borders, which has catastrophically decreased their range (figure 7.8). All of the African cat species are classed as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), not only from outright killing and range shrinkage but also because, as with other surviving pantherins, habitat fragmentation results in a population’s genetic isolation. Small and isolated populations result in a decrease in variability from inbreeding, and the species becomes less resilient to disease and less able to adapt to change. Although less well publicized than their counterparts in Africa and India, the ecological richness and wildlife diversity of Central Asia are today under an equally serious threat. As late as the 1920s and 1930s, regions like Tibet and Mongolia supported huge herds of chiru or Tibetan antelope, gazelle, kiang or wild ass, yak, and Bactrian camel on the open plains while white-lipped deer, argali, and bharal flourished in the hills and high precipices. Some of these were staple prey for common and snow leopards. Although for decades Central Asia was less accessible than other parts of the world because of the turmoil of war and changing politics, it was soon discovered to be a hunter’s paradise, and the losses began. Long after the lions and tigers had been killed off, sports and subsistence hunting of ungulates in a largely poor, pastoral culture began to take its toll; this was compounded by the uncontrolled slaughter of Tibetan antelope or chiru for their fine, fleecy wool, known as shatoosh, reaching its height in the 1970s and 1980s. Like the killing of native snow and common leopards, whose spotted coats fed a clothing fashion trend, chiru killing still continues, and the wool is now turned into scarves in Nepal as well as Kashmir. Chiru and other native ungulates still continue to suffer from sharing their fragile grazing areas with hordes of sheep, goats, and domestic yak. Snow and common leopards, whose large ranges are in inverse proportion to their prey availability, may turn to taking livestock in order to survive, and, as in Africa and India, they are shot or poisoned by herders and farmers who are justifiably embittered by losing their animals to a predator. Snow leopards, whose pelts continue to be sold illicitly by locals, are shot and poisoned as livestock predators and have, like other Asian big cats, suffered a reduction in range and numbers.
Praise for On the Prowl “On the Prowl is a superb book, both enjoyable and instructive. I’m greatly impressed with the huge amount of data that Mark Hallett and John M. Harris have collected and presented in a most readable manner. The complex evolutionary history and relationships of the cats will keep researchers arguing for years.” —GEORGE SCHALLER, senior conservationist, Wildlife Conservation Society, and author of The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations
“On the Prowl brings together biological and paleontological research related to the origins and history of the big cats, with an original emphasis on Asiatic data, paying homage to their majesty, dignity, and beauty. Hallett’s artwork has succeeded brilliantly in capturing their inner spirit and character, their vulnerability and vitality. This book will serve the noble goals of making people aware of the fragility of ecosystems and revealing the moral obligation to preserve and protect extant species.” —CHRISTINE ARGOT, research professor and curator of collections, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle
“Hallett and Harris guide the reader on a 20-million-year tour of predator and prey evolution, using environmental change as an engine for adaptation and extinction. The narrative is engaging, spiked with a touch of controversy, and supported by superb illustrations. For those interested in the evolutionary origins of big cats, On the Prowl would be a valuable addition to your library.” —CHRISTOPHER SHAW, Idaho Museum of Natural History
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