What is important to keep in mind here is that everyone involved had known one another, effectively, “forever.” The lions had been raised—for millennia—with an awareness of Bushmen, and the Bushmen had been brought up with an understanding of lions. Each was part of the other’s larger community and whatever imbalances may have existed were calibrated long before the Pyramids were even imagined. In other words, there was a culture in place—what Thomas describes as “a web of socially transmitted behaviours”—and all participating parties had been habituated to their particular roles.
