Sex, Gender, and the Behavior of Early Homo 179The fact that humans and their
ancestors are and were tasty meals for
a wide range of predators is further
supported by research on nonhuman
primate species still in existence. My
study of predation found that 178
species of predatory animals included
primates in their diets. The predators
ranged from tiny but fierce birds to
500-pound crocodiles, with a little of
almost everything in between: tigers,
lions, leopards, jaguars, jackals,
hyenas, genets, civets, mongooses,
Komodo dragons, pythons, eagles,
hawks, owls, and even toucans.
Our closest genetic relatives,
chimpanzees and gorillas, are prey to
humans and other species. Who would
have thought that gorillas, weighing
as much as 400 pounds, would end
up as cat food? Yet Michael Fay, a re-
searcher with the Wildlife Conservation
Society and the National Geographic
Society, has found the remnants of a
gorilla in leopard feces in the Central
African Republic. Despite their obvious
intelligence and strength, chimpanzees
often fall victim to leopards and lions.
In the Tai Forest in the Ivory Coast,
Christophe Boesch, of the Max Planck
Institute, found that over 5 percent
of the chimp population in his study
was consumed by leopards annu-
ally. Takahiro Tsukahara reported, in
a 1993 article, that 6 percent of the
chimpanzees in the Mahale Mountains
National Park of Tanzania may fall
victim to lions.
The theory of Man the Hunter as
our archetypal ancestor isn’t supported
by archaeological evidence, either.
Lewis R. Binford, one of the mostinfluential figures in archaeology dur-
ing the last half of the 20th century,
dissented from the hunting theory on
the ground that reconstructions of early
humans as hunters were based on a
priori positions and not on the archaeo-
logical record. Artifacts that would verify
controlled fire and weapons, in particu-
lar, are lacking until relatively recent
dates....
And, of course, there’s also the
problem of how a small hominid
could subdue a large herbivore....
Large-scale, systematic hunting of big
herbivores for meat may not have oc-
curred any earlier than 60,000 years
ago—over 6 million years after the first
hominids evolved.
What I am suggesting, then, is a less
powerful, more ignominious beginning
for our species. Consider this alternate
image: smallish beings (adult females
maybe weighing 60 pounds, with males
a bit heavier), not overly analytical
because their brain-to-body ratio was
rather small, possessing the ability to
stand and move upright, who basically
spent millions of years as meat walking
around on two legs. Rather than Man the
Hunter, we may need to visualize our-
selves as more like Giant Hyena Chow, or
Protein on the Go.
Our species began as just one of
many that had to be careful, to depend
on other group members, and to com-
municate danger. We were quite simply
small beasts within a large and complex
ecosystem.
Is Man the Hunter a cultural con-
struction of the West? Belief in a sinful,
violent ancestor does fit nicely with
Christian views of original sin and thenecessity to be saved from our own aw-
ful, yet natural, desires. Other religions
don’t necessarily emphasize the ancient
savage in the human past; indeed,
modern-day hunter–gatherers, who have
to live as part of nature, hold animistic
beliefs in which humans are a part of
the web of life, not superior creatures
who dominate or ravage nature and
each other.
Think of Man the Hunted, and you
put a different face on our past.... We
needed to live in groups (like most other
primates) and work together to avoid
predators. Thus an urge to cooperate
can clearly be seen as a functional tool
rather than a Pollyannaish nicety, and
deadly competition among individuals or
nations may be highly aberrant behavior,
not hard-wired survival techniques. The
same is true of our destructive domina-
tion of the earth by technological toys
gone mad.
Raymond Dart declared that “the
loathsome cruelty of mankind to
man... is explicable only in terms
of his carnivorous, and cannibalistic
origin.” But if our origin was not car-
nivorous and cannibalistic, we have no
excuse for loathsome behavior. Our ear-
liest evolutionary history is not pushing
us to be awful bullies. Instead, our
millions of years as prey suggest that
we should be able to take our heritage
of cooperation and interdependency
to make a brighter future for ourselves
and our planet.Adapted from Hart, D. (2006, April 21).
Humans as prey. Chronicle of Higher
Education.Whether as hunters or as the hunted, brain expansion
and tool use played a significant role in the evolution of the
genus Homo. The advanced preparation for meat processing
implied by the storing of stone tools, and the raw materials
for making them, attest to considerable foresight, an ability
to plan ahead, and cooperation among our ancestors.
Brain Size and Diet
From its appearance 2.5 mya until about 200,000 years ago,
the genus began a course of brain expansion through varia-
tional change (see Chapter 6) that continued until about
200,000 years ago. By this point, brain size had approximately
tripled, reaching the proportion of contemporary people. The
cranial capacity of the largely plant-eating Australopithecus
ranged from 310 to 530 cubic centimeters (cc); that of the
earliest known meat eater, Homo habilis from East Africa,
ranged from 580 to 752 cc; whereas Homo erectus, who
eventually hunted as well as scavenged for meat, possessed a
cranial capacity of 775 to 1,225 cc.
Larger brains, in turn, required parallel improvements
in diet. The energy demands of nerve tissue, of which the
brain is made, are high—higher, in fact, than the demands
of other types of tissue in the human body. Although
a mere 2 percent of body weight, the brain accounts for
about 20 to 25 percent of energy consumed at resting
metabolic rate in modern human adults.^3 One can meet(^3) Leigh, S. R., & Park, P. B. (1998). Evolution of human growth prolonga-
tion. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 107, 347.