sustaining crops are left to rot in the fields. A similar kind of paralysis
overcame the village of Sobolonye, even though most of the populace
there was armed. When faced with threats of this kind, the loss of morale
can be profound. If one imagines those hands over the face as a
metaphorical hiding place, perhaps that is what sleep and shelter once
meant to us: a more sustainable way of blocking out the horrors that
stalked our waking lives, a way of thinking them into the world of
unbeing, at least until the sun lit up the world again.
This is a humbling scenario to contemplate. On the other hand, if one
could manage to survive and multiply in an environment like that, it
stands to reason that nothing could stop you. Given enough time, such
creatures could colonize the earth, and we have. Seen from this point of
view, Southern Africa was not so much the Cradle of Humankind as it
was the crucible. If the savanna was as Brain and others believe, it would
have been a kind of ultimate proving ground for slow, weak, thin-skinned
but increasingly quick-witted creatures like ourselves. In the view of
evolutionists, such a challenging environment would have provided the
necessary selection pressures for us to evolve, a prime and primal
example of what Arnold Toynbee called the “optimum challenge.”
Brain has found fossil evidence to support this in the caves of the
Transvaal, and can roughly identify the moment when the same caves
into which we were once dragged and consumed became the refuges from
which we actively drove predators away. It took a new species to shift
this balance of power, and it almost certainly occurred at the hands of our
direct ancestor, Homo habilis. It is a transition that would have been
thrilling, and agonizing, to witness. Brought about by larger brains, tools,
and, eventually, fire, it would have profoundly altered the relationship
between early humans and the creatures who preyed on them, however
occasionally.
All of us, whether predator or prey, are opportunistic and creatures of
habit. Thus, if a leopard or a pack of hunting hyenas failed enough times
in its efforts to capture us, or was effectively intimidated, its menu
preferences would shift accordingly—perhaps to baboons, where they
remain today. Once this new configuration had stabilized, the offspring of
ron
(Ron)
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