Varied vegetation in a region allows a wide variety of animals to coexist. During much of the late Ice Age, in hilly to mountainous terrain like that of Cantabrian Spain, SW France, southern Germany, and the Czech Republic, large herbivores (as well as carnivores and scavengers) with very different environmental requirements coexisted. These included, for example, mountain goats, reindeer, bison, and horses. The prehistoric human occupants shared these landscapes with as many as a dozen species of such large-bodied animals, a situation unknown in these latitudes today. Far from being impoverished, these environments had a higher animal biomass than any occupied by hunting and gathering peoples today. It is more reasonable to compare these environments with the modern plains of Africa than with present-day Arctic tundra.
In regions with more even topography, diversity of species was reduced, but the animal biomass remained very high. Less varied environmental conditions meant fewer kinds of animals but more of each kind. The gigantic woolly mammoths seem to have been few in number in the rugged countryside of southwestern France but abundant on the broad, flat steppes of Eastern Europe, for example. What follows is a portfolio of late Ice Age animals as seen through the eyes of Upper Paleolithic artists:
A reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) engraved on an antler fragment. Reindeer was the most important species in the diet of Upper Paleolithic peoples in Europe.
A shaggy male horse (Equus caballus) painted in black pigment from the cave of Niaux, France.
A European bison (Bison priscus) painted in red and black. from the cave of Altamira, Spain.
The head of a male aurochs (Bos primigenius), painted in black in the grande salle of Lascaux, France.
A woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) sculpted in bas-relief in the cave of Saint-Front, France.
An ibex (Capra ibex) engraved on a fragment of antler found in the Grotte de Lacave, France.
Three woolly rhinoceroses (Coelodonta antiquitatis) in procession, painted in black on the wall of Rouffignac cave, France.
Lion's head (Felis sp.) sculpted in ivory from the site of Kostienki 1, Russia.
Two superimposed birds' heads engraved on a cortical flake of flint from an unidentified cave near Les Eyzies, France.
Grasshopper engraved on a bone fragment from the cave of Enlène, France.
Salamander sculpted of reindeer antler from the site of Laugerie-Basse, France.
A brown bear engraved on a slab of stone from the Grotte des Eyzies, France.