- Here, archeologists sift through the muddy layers of time to find out more about the risks these early people took to survive.

- You know when people talk about archeology?

- Yes.

- At the back of a cave, digging mud is (laughs), this is the hard stuff.

- One thing that has been found in a number of caves on the northwest coast is spear points in association with bear bones.

- Yeah.

- And these date as far back as 13,000 years.

- Mm.

So is this one of these spear points?

- This is a fragment of a spear point that was found in a cave not too far from here.

We have uncovered a bone in the wall of this unit, and it's 20 centimeters below the surface, and so I'm going to pull it, and we'll see if it moves.

- [Host] All right.

And we don't know what species it is or what bit of bone it is.

- [Archeologist] There's not enough here- - Yeah.

Yeah.

- To know for sure, but it is a pretty big mammal.

- [Host] Ah, it's a rib, isn't it?

- So that could be a bear rib.

That's probably most likely what it is, 'cause it's quite robust.

- Oh, amazing.

What age do you think it is?

- Well, we have some other samples from above where this bone is.

- Yeah.

- And they're coming back around 14,000 years old.

- Okay, so it's old.

- So it could be the same age or older.

- Yeah.

You know, one of the most wonderful things about archeology is that sometimes you uncover something that hasn't seen the light of day in thousands of years, and in this case, maybe 14,000 years.

- Well, we're interested in where bears were hunted in the past, and in the winter, when there's not as many resources around and people are feeling a bit hungry, knowing where there is a bear den is quite a valuable thing, 'cause you can come up there and dispatch the bear.

You'll have a load of meat, fur, as well as bones.

- [Host] One theory of how they hunted bears comes from studies of the native peoples of this region and North Asia in past centuries.

- Essentially, a hunter would go with a party to a cave, smoke the bear out of the cave, and entice that bear to attack a single hunter.

That hunter would be armed with a bracing spear.

A bear would come to take the hunter up in a bear hug, which is a common thing that they do- - Yeah.

- And the idea is a bear would take that hunter and essentially give him a good crushing.

The hunter, at the same time, would brace the spear on the ground and aim it at the bear's heart, and so essentially, the bear would take the hunter and the spear into the bear hug, thereby spearing itself through the heart.