predators on the savanna, even before our brain size doubled, is what paved the way for human dispersal out of Africa into the treeless north where many of the final evolutionary brush strokes to the modern mind were applied, preparing Homo sapiens for entry into the New World. With a large hole in the archaeological record, Beringian experts sometimes rely upon academic models of foraging for rates of human colonization.
But the first Americans encountered huge flesh-eating beasts they had never seen before, or had never seen them—unique conditions in human foraging. What might be the possibilities of sharing the landscape with Arctodus simus? The evidence is indirect. Did the gigantic short-faced bear, a long-legged animal that stood almost seven feet at the shoulder, limit human occupation of North America? Paleontologists and anthropological models hardly ever mention people/short-faced bear relations, though it is entirely possible that human demographics in North America could have been severely restricted by the presence of these huge carnivores.
The fact is that ice-age pioneers somehow did co-exist with some of these animals in Siberia between 13,000 and 30,000 years ago; credible pre-Clovis dates from the New World suggest that a few travelers in the lower states of the U.S. did as well. The real mystery is why don’t we find evidence of many more people soaking up the sun south of the North American glacial sheets prior to the Clovis invasion?
To state it clearly, both sides of Beringia—the Siberian and Alaskan, the Old World and the New—may have presented quite different comfort zones for human colonizers. The presence of aggressive American predators in eastern Beringia, especially the short-faced bear, may refute Arctic foraging models for the whole of Beringia.
An illustration of that dissimilarity may be seen in the behavior of the brown bear.
The Eurasian brown bear and the American grizzly may look alike but their aggression levels are sufficiently dissimilar to earn the grizzly the subspecies name, Ursus arctos horribilis. When the brown bear crossed over the Bering Strait some 70,000 years ago to the American side, the theory goes, mothers had to protect their cubs from American lions, short-faced bears, wolves and other Alaskan predators on the open tundra. The best defense was a good offense. Grizzlies charged and, when necessary, attacked threats to their young.
It might be informative to examine the possibility that Pleistocene North America might have been an unusually rough place to live. The presence of all those predators could have squeezed human consciousness into a tight focus that could shed light on the astounding and explosive nature of American colonization around 13,000 years ago.
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A seminal moment in the life of a hunter arrives when he finds himself the hunted: That dread second when he is frozen in his tracks at the edge of the meadow by the eerie silence in the forest; he feels a primordial but familiar tenseness clamping the back of his neck and he realizes that he is being stalked as prey by a large beast.
This ancient relationship doesn’t present itself to the modern world as frequently as it did prior to the industrial age or, especially, during the last days of the Pleistocene. In fact, predation on human beings is so uncommon today that when a single lion, bear or tiger emerges from the bush to stalk, kill and sometimes eat a human it generates international news and best-selling books. A much-chronicled modern account tells the story of a Siberian tiger’s vengeful attack on a man named Markov, a poacher who had previously hunted and wounded the huge cat. The vendetta took place during December of 1997 near the Amba River in the Bikin River drainage of Russia’s Far East. This predatory tiger incident was first chronicled in 1998 by renowned Russian bear and tiger biologist Dmitri Pikunov; the details of this particular attack, however, constituted such a good story that they were rewritten into a popular book in 2010.
The author of Tiger provides a few details of the attack: “In 1997, the Russian investigating officer who was tracking the tiger, reported: ‘(he) had never seen a fellow human so thoroughly and gruesomely annihilated. It looks at first like a heap of laundry until one sees the boots, luminous stubs of broken bone protruding from the tops, the tattered shirt with an arm still fitted to one of the sleeves. Here, amid the twigs and leaf litter in the deep Russian forest, not far from his small cabin, is all that remains of Vladimir Ilyich Markov.’ The tiger who killed, dismembered and ate Markov waited for him a long time, perhaps days, lurking near the door of his cabin….”
This huge male tiger had previously destroyed everything that had smelled of Markov, and then waited for him to come home. The attack seemed chillingly premeditated.
About this time, as I read on, a chill ran up my own neck. Something about this tiger sounded familiar. How old was this cat? I reread the book but all I could definitively glean was this was a very large male tiger. I think male Siberian tigers, like male grizzlies, continue to grow in size with age. Tigers can live to be 15 years old or so in the wild, although large tigers tend to be targeted by poachers and are therefore rare. The tiger who ate Markov was later killed but never weighed. An experienced eyewitness said he had “never seen a tiger as big as that one.”
A male tiger maintains an exclusive range, driving younger males away or killing them. Siberian tigers have huge territories. Could the killer tiger be ten years old? Possibly. I do the math. Probably, I think. Dmitri Pikunov would know for sure. The book says Dmitri has had a serious heart attack or I would ask him directly: Is the killer tiger the same one we trailed in 1992? We crossed the tracks of the tiger in question four miles southeast of the Markov attack site.
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Dmitri Pikunov and I were 2-person tent mates on a kayak trip down the wild upper Bikin River in 1992. At least I think it was 1992. I dig out my field notebooks: Yes. Our journey was a buddy trip with five American friends: Jib Ellison, Doug Tompkins, Rick Ridgeway, Tom Brokaw and Yvon Chouinard—famed kayakers and mountain climbers, well, all except myself and perhaps Brokaw. We spent about three weeks in Siberian tiger country, the last ten days fishing and paddling down the wild Bikin River.
We ran into Dmitri in Ternai while struggling to break loose of the Russian bureaucracy and get into the wilderness:
In order to visit the countryside, we are told, it is necessary to secure a permit from the Bureau of Tourism. The Director of Tourism offers us a river trip using our own kayaks for only $2,100, American.
“A truck and motor boat will accompany you at all times,” he says.
This is not exactly what we had in mind. I stare out the window of what until recently used to be the Communist Party building: A pretty girl is walking her cow down the street.
“This is banditry,” says Brokaw who along with Jib has acquired the unsolicited job of group-diplomat. We are getting nowhere. Jib stands up and announces that “We are out of here, we are going home.”
These guys are good sports, they roll with the punches and there is no whining.
By fortune, we run into Pikunov. He knows we are interested in preserving wild country. Dmitri’s greatest personal accomplishment, he tells us, was in helping establish a Native People’s Reserve in the Bikin for the Udege people. The Bikin River country, he argues, is “the most beautiful, most pristine of all.”
“You must see it,” he says. “Hyundai wants to cut it all down and Moscow will cave in to them.”
The die is now cast. We decide to ignore warnings that we must get permission from the KGB to travel: We will try to bribe a helicopter pilot on our own to fly us and our fold-up kayaks into the headwaters of the Bikin River. It can be done, we hear.
We dig into our pockets and come up with a roll of cash that we pass to Dmitri. We find a chopper. Dmitri Pikunov says, “Speak no English.” He covertly passes the roll to the pilot. Soon we are airborne.
We have a single map. The country is huge with no trace of man upon the land. The map shows the middle tributary of the Bikin River, the Zeva River, unfurling counterclockwise, flowing through eroded volcanic hills and cliffs of columnar basalt, finally hooking into the Bikin. That’s where we want to go.
Yvon and I look out the open window of the big military-style Aeroflot helicopter, the port that Rick has opened in order to take some photographs.