The Leopard Springs of Ussat — Karl H. Schlesier

The Leopard Springs of Ussat. A Novel from the Ice Age The Hot Springs of Ussat, (here called the Leopard Springs in the story) are located on the Ariege. River in the French Pyrenees, below the cave system of Lombrives-Niaux. The story of the book is set in the western Languedoc and the east central Pyrenees. Locations mentioned are real places and are given with their present French names. The setting in regard to time is a nearly one-year period, extending from July 13, 12,130 B. C. to June 21, 12,129 B. C. The main characters of the story are a young man, Yegra, and an old man, Red Arrows. After the sudden death of his wife, Yegra leaves his parents' camp and travels the mountains of the Massif Central to find himself. A visionary dream informs him to seek the guidance of an old ceremonial man and band leader, Red Arrows, his grandfather by the tribal definition of kin. He joins the Old Man's camp and is guided by him through the months leading up to the annual ceremonial visit to the Lombrives-Niaux cave sanctuary, where he participates in the secret and sacred four-day shamanistic event. The seasons of his year with the Red Arrows band, are described in complete agreement with the information now available to prehistorians, as is the recounting of hunting big game and the different techniques used for different species. Also featured are a New Year's ceremony (belonging to what is termed Bear Cult in anthropological literature) and a raid into hostile territory. Interspersed with the story are short cultural comments as made by an informant in an ethnographic fieldwork-style dialogue. It is a method to explain Magdalenian religious, philosophical and other cultural concepts and features without overburdening the story. Obviously, the cultural inserts complement the story and appear in places relevant to it. The author, a noted cultural anthropologist, has written widely about the world perceptions of original peoples of Siberia and North America and their prehistory. After extensive research, he has walked the area described and seen its archaeological and sacred sites (painted caves), making a reconstruction of the ancient culture possible.