Ancient Falconry

Of particular significance are the comments of Aelian (circa. AD 220), supposedly quoting ‘Ctesias the Cnydian.’ Ctesias was court doctor to the Persian King Artexeises II (Mnemnon) in the early fifth century BC. His early treatise on falconry describes the country and customs of the ‘pygmies’, a mysterious people inhabiting some part of Central Asia. He states that "they hunt hares and foxes with crows, yellow-breasted marten cats and with cornices and eagles." (Other translations suggest crows, kites, rooks and eagles were used).

Ctesias also provides details of how these unlikely species were trained to catch hares and foxes. "They catch young eagles and also the young of ravens and vultures, bring them up and train them for hunting. The procedure is as follows. They hang meat on a tame hare or a tamed fox and let it run; then they send the birds after them and permit them to take hold of the meat. The birds try this with all their might, and when they have caught up with the one or the other, they may take the meat as a prize and this for them is a great lure. When they have been brought to precision in this type of hunting, the Indians let them loose on mountain hares and wild foxes. In hope of the usual meal, they chase after the prey which appears, and catch it very quickly."

This description helps to solve another problem for the falconry hypothesis – the presence of vulture remains at these early sites. By their very nature, vultures in the wild are carrion feeders and do not hunt and kill live prey. However, if the remarkable evidence from Ctesias can be believed, vultures appear to have been trained to catch hares and foxes in the fifth century BC.

Vultures can certainly be easily tamed and trained to fly to hand, particularly the Egyptian vulture, which is flown today at several bird of prey centres around Britain. Even if the vultures at these sites weren’t actually used for hunting, falconers may have used them to train smaller birds of prey to hunt the larger ones, a common practice described in the historic literature.

Eagle-owl bones at many of the Stone Age sites add another interesting dimension to the falconry hypothesis. This extremely powerful bird of prey can also be trained to hunt a range of prey, and eagle owls are particularly effective at dusk or even at night. A small group of falconers today use the eagle owl in this way. A Persian treatise on falconry (the Baznama-Yi Nasiri, translated by Lt Col. E. S. Harcourt and Lt Col. D. C. Phillott in 1868) states that "what the golden eagle is to the day, the eagle owl is to the night. Hares and foxes fall an easy prey to it."

Others have described how hunters can use eagle owls - along with other owl species - to lure other large birds of prey to the ground, where they can be captured or killed. This method works very well, particularly if the owl is left disabled or tethered on the ground, where it is invariably attacked and mobbed by other birds of prey.