This is not the middle east of today.
A stark and foreboding landscape of ice and snow covers the entire region. Earth is in one of its many ice ages and life has halted to a near standstill with many animals dying out and others thriving with the decreased competition.
Harsh winds blow the snow into eddies swirling over the ice and stone. The desert will not make its debut here for another 150,000 years. Now it is ice, then, as now, the same starkness will prevail only with sand.
Four small figures make their way over the wasteland. Small specks of dark against a landscape of white.
Lar and his hunting companions Ete and Gad have been following the trail of a lone mammoth for days. Hunger has started to give way to starvation, and they all realize that the hunt cannot go on much longer before they die. However, they continue not just for themselves but for their tribe who also depend on them to make it through the winter.
Lar is a man of thirty odd years. Birth was not something they counted but they did know how many winters had passed up until the ice age. Now winter was one long continuance of existence. Time no longer had as much meaning. Lar was not even aware of his own age, but he knew he was older than the others and the others knew he was wiser. His wisdom came not from knowledge but from action; from being able to find and kill the meat required to survive. Skill or luck, it was a trait invaluable to early man.
The companions all carried spears with oaken shafts tipped with flint arrows. Lar also carried a flint knife that was his most prized possession. He had the uncanny habit of fingering it when he was deep in thought and he did this as they walked.
Ete is the young man of the group. Barely eighteen years but already missing two fingers to frostbite. His face bears the scar of a mammoth tusk coming much to close, though his quick reflexes saved his life on that occasion. He chews on a dried root which was the closest they could come to nourishment on these long hunting treks.
Early man has evolved at this stage from wandering groups to established tribes. They learned that small groups could be depended on for survival much easier than any one individual. The long growth toward social and economic structures had begun which would not see fruition for another 360,000 years. Small steps.
The three companions are dressed in what has become a necessity in the increasingly harsh climate – heavy animal skins with foot and hand wrapping. Even dressed as they are though, much of their skin is exposed and frost bite is something that occurs on a regular basis – leaving many of them less an occasional toe or finger. Still, a modern human could not survive even an hour in the climate they endure day after day, hour after hour.
The hunt was nearing the end for the companions. They all knew it though their limited forms of communication did not enable them to speak of it. Death was not something to be contemplated. Death just was. Death was a fact of life for them, so it was not dreaded. They dealt with it all the time, so it lost its ability to cause fear in them. Still the desire for life and the necessity of food to sustain it drove them onward. They knew without the food and the meat the young ones would be lost and the mothers to be would never see past the winter. All the old ones had already been lost. Only the young and virile had survived this long. Where their group had been twenty and even thirty at its height, it was now reduced to nine individuals. Five men and four women. One of the men had been wounded badly by a mammoth that gored him in the chest. He would not survive the week – and then they would be eight.
The tracks of the mammoth spiraled on into the distance into one of the many valleys that lay between the large mountains. The danger was not only in the increasing cold but also in the possibility of encountering another tribe which could mean they would lose the mammoth they had spent so much time tracking at best or at worst it could mean a confrontation in which death always occurred for someone. Still, they followed the tracks onward driven by necessity.
Gad peers up into the tall peaks looking for movement against the white. This is expected of him since the others know he can see things in the distance that they cannot. All he sees though are the tall peaks looming ahead of them, frozen monuments risen in testament to what will someday be known as the ice age.
As they round the area near the periphery of the mountain their eyes come to rest on what to them promised salvation. During this one moment they feel as close as any of them will ever come to what we in the modern world call happiness. Happiness was the possibility of survival. It was knowing that life would continue on along with its many hardships. Anything more was unfathomable.
The mammoth was nudging through the snow with its huge tusks hoping to find remnants of some plant life. For their huge size the large beasts were mainly herbivores.
Lar is the first to spot the mammoth and motions for the other two to take cover behind a large boulder.
The two companions immediately follow his request. He was thirty years old and an ancient wise man to them. Anyone that could survive that long in this environment deserved respect, and this they gave him.
The mammoth rutted on unaware of their presence. They knew the slightest misstep could result in the mammoth running and if that happened it would once again be necessary to track him over miles and miles of ice. Only this time their possibility of survival would be much smaller. They had already lost him once due to a misstep that had taken place two days ago.
As Lar begins to approach the mammoth he notices a strange smell. It was not his own smell and nor was it the mammoths. But it was something alive and feral. He looked around trying to locate the origin of the odor and his eyes soon came to rest on a large pack of wolves. There are eight of them and Lar knows that he and his own were no match for these evolutionary ancestors of the dog. They are bigger, faster and healthier and one could easily best a man in battle. Lar knew this because many of those he knew had been lost to wolves. They were another aspect of the deadly environment in which they lived. Something else which they were at the mercy of.
Lar motioned the others back toward the rocky expanse of a nearby cave. They had seen the wolves too and they knew what he was intending. They knew too that their only hope was that the wolves, after the kill, might leave some bare scraps of meat or some other parts of the carcass and they might be able to scavenge those after they departed. They also knew that this was rarely the case. Though, bigger and stronger, the wolves were also malnourished and on the verge of starvation. This environment punished everything alive equally.
The companions wait, near the safety of the cave and they watch as the wolves carefully surround the Mammoth, preparing for the kill. When it happens, it is so quick that it is impossible to tell which wolf made the crucial bite to the jugular. All they see is a frenzy of death in which two wolves die, victims of the mammoth’s tusks, and the mammoth is finally overwhelmed.
The mammoth, in its death throws, fights to stand and then falls again, blood flowing from the gaping wound near the neck, where the sharp incisors of the wolves have cut through to the jugular. The other mammoths have turned and fled, knowing they have avoided death for at least another day. The young of the one fallen briefly turns back before they too are lost in the blowing snow and ice.
The wolves eat cautiously, their wary glances taking notice of Lar and his companions. But something different stirs in the largest of the wolves, his eyes reflecting a reasoning of sorts. He turns to regard the men with an understanding that is beyond that of his pack. Something formulates in his canine reasoning, something that sees beyond the immediate bodily needs of his pack.
The gray-hair watches as the smallest of the pack finally come forward to get their fill. They lap at the blood and devour the tougher parts of the mammoth, thankful that the gnawing hunger in their bellies will soon subside. The gray-hair watches and waits to see that all have had their fill, or enough to carry them on to another kill, and then he does something unexpected by either his pack or the humans watching them. He begins to growl, at first a low moan, but soon it turns into a warning, directed at his pack, both the young and old.
Confused, the other wolves look around, trying to understand what it is he is communicating to them. They soon realize that they are to quit feeding, though the mammoth still has meat and sustenance which they all know is necessary for their own survival. Gray-hair is insistent though and soon the pack retreats in deference to his position as leader. He is urging them on, away from the carcass and back into the hills and barrows from where they came. They go, reluctantly at first, but then with resignation that they must obey, knowing that the strength of the pack depends on a strong leader.
The companions are confused too. They wonder if perhaps the wolves plan to trap them by offering what is left of the mammoth to draw them in so that they might feed on them too. Lar thinks differently though. He looks over the snow and the ice and into the eyes of the gray-hair and he recognizes something there, something primordial that speaks of a oneness that goes beyond flesh and bone. He realizes that this is something that the wolf is doing for them. It is a gift, though he scarcely understands the word in this world of scarcity and hunger.
He nods at the wolf and then he motions his companions toward the remains of the mammoth. They go, not understanding what has just taken place, but thankful all the same. They eat, though there is not much left. Still, it is enough for their survival. Lar looks up and sees the wolf watching them in the distance. He feels thankful and somewhere deep within his mind a new bond begins to form between human and canine. A bond that will change both of them in more ways than either of them could ever know.
