The capture of lions for elite sport dates back far before the Romans. The famous reliefs from the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in the British Museum depict a series of ritualised lion hunts. The lions depicted are Asian lions, notably smaller than their southern African cousins, and are shown being released from wooden crates prior to the hunt. The lions hunted by Romans were probably Barbary Lions, another species which was native to the Barbary Coast of North Africa, between the Atlas Mountains and Egypt. Once common, they were driven close to extinction in the 19th Century; the last few isolated enclaves are thought to have died out in the 1960s. The depictions of Ashurbanipal's hunt depict how lions were herded and corralled by club-wielding men and packs of dogs, and it's likely that lions captured by the Romans were similarly cornered and then trapped with nets.