The Prince and the Bear

High in a Ligurian cliff, overlooking what would once have been a colder, wilder Mediterranean world, a teenage boy was laid to rest with care. Shells crowned his head. Stone blades and ornaments were arranged around his body. For decades, archaeologists admired the artistry of the burial at Arene Candide Cave and wondered about the life of the youth known as “Il Principe.”

The teenager’s head, showing trauma to the face, with a reconstructed cap of shells, as displayed today (left). The same area after excavation (right). Archives of the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Liguria; From “New Signs of Skeletal Trauma in the Upper Paleolithic Principe from Arene Candide Cave (Liguria, Italy) Bear Novel Insights into the Circumstances of His Death,” by Stefano Sparacello et al., in Journal of Anthropological Sciences, Vol. 103; 2025

Now, a fresh forensic reading of his skeleton suggests a harsher story. The bones carry the signature of a violent encounter with a large predator, most likely a cave bear or brown bear. The reanalysis, published by Sparacello and colleagues in 2025,¹ turns a ceremonial grave into a rare case file of Ice Age danger, where humans were not only hunters but sometimes prey.