such “reformed” predators would presumably reflect these dietary
changes. There is good reason to suppose that, like the !Kung among
lions, and the Udeghe among tigers, early man became an active, if
cautious, cohabitant with these animals rather than their chronic victim.
In any case, it would have been a close call—most likely, a long series
of them. It is noteworthy that it took roughly five million years before
hominids—probably in the form of Homo erectus—finally developed the
brains, the tools, and the legs to get out of Africa alive. There were big
cats, hyenas, and wolves all along the way, and this may be one reason
most of our hominid relatives never made it. It is striking, too, that,
unlike so many other species—cats, for example—we are the only branch
of our family (Hominidae) who survived the journey. In this sense, we are
evolutionary orphans—a broken family of one, and it puts us in strange
company: we share our genetic solitude with the platypus, the gharial,
and the coelacanth.
Today, the ghosts of our ancestors continue to haunt us, manifesting a
host of old family traits that have persisted through the ages, and that
continue to influence our behavior and inform our responses and attitudes
toward the world around us. In an effort to test some of the instinctive
connections between modern humans and our primitive forebears,
Richard Coss, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis,
conducted a study in which he created a virtual savanna with typical
features including a thorn tree, a boulder, and a rock crevice. After
showing this empty, primordial landscape to a group of American
preschool children, he introduced a virtual lion. Then he asked the
children where they would go to find safety. Most of them chose the
thorn tree or the crevice; only one in six picked the boulder. With no
prior experience of savannas or predation, and a rudimentary, possibly
cartoon-based, understanding of lions, more than 80 percent of these
children understood the risk and the appropriate response to it. The small