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PRAISE FORTHE FIRST EDITION
“Hart and Sussman have written a highly readable book, with jazzy
subtitles such as ‘Will the First Hominid Please Stand Up?,’ ‘Before the
Age of Ulcers,’ and ‘My, What Big Teeth You Have!’ Their argument
that human beings and their predecessors, during almost the entire
period of their evolution, have been preyed on rather than predators is
entirely persuasive.” —American Anthropologist
“Donna Hart and Robert Sussman’s observations of how living primates
cope with constant threats bring to life their interpretation of our extinct
human relatives and ancestors, along with the role that predation has
played on our social and cognitive evolution. Surprise, surprise, it has
always paid to have friends and allies.” —New Scientist
“Hart and Sussman’s book presents a good synthesis of pertinent etho-
logical observations and a summary of theoretical framing, along with a
healthy dose of anecdote.” —Evolutionary Anthropology
“Man the Hunted . . . is accessible and interesting. . . . The authors
describe and debate the common view of Man as the evolving hunter
and present their own view of Man’s evolution as an adapting prey by
integrating fossil records and behavioral data from living predator-
prey interactions involving human and nonhuman primates.”
—American Journal of Human Biology
“Contrary to the familiar image of the aggressive, spear-wielding ‘caveman,’
our hominid ancestors were more hunted than hunters, more preyed
upon than slayers of large predators, contend wildlife conservationist Hart
and anthropologist Sussman. . . . [T]he authors’ novel proposals merit
serious consideration.” —Publishers Weekly
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“In an agile, knowledgeable presentation, the authors contest a popular
conception about human evolution: that ancestral hominids were
hunters.... To make their case, which eminent paleoanthropologist Ian
Tattersall extols in a preface as ‘the first comprehensive synthesis of the
information available about predation on humans,’ Hart and Sussman
marshal both fossils and behavioral studies of living primates. The
authors’ prose is wryly irreverent, as if intended to keep a lecture class
awake and interested.” —Booklist
“Their thesis is far more complex than merely changing one letter to
transform man the hunter into man the hunted. Hunt and Sussman are
looking at the whole of human history in a light that’s quite different
from what most of us have been taught, and ... their overall effort is
thought-provoking and pretty persuasive.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“[R]eaders will eagerly proceed through chapters about the interaction
of primates with felines and canines, reptiles and raptors, even sharks.
Those are far from dry scientific presentations. The writing is rich with
well-crafted stories drawn from the fossil record and from modern
observations of predation on our fellow primates—and humans.”
—The Dallas Morning News
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EXPANDED EDITION
M H
AN THE UNTED
P , P ,
RIMATES REDATORS
H E
AND UMAN VOLUTION
Donna Hart
University of Missouri – St. Louis
Robert W. Sussman
Washington University
AMember of the Perseus Books Group
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Copyright © 2009 by Westview Press
Published by Westview Press,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Originally published in 2005 in the United States of America by Westview Press,
a Member of the Perseus Books Group.
Every effort has been made to secure required permissions to use all images, maps,
and other art included in this volume.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information, address Westview Press, 2465 Central Avenue, Boulder, CO 80301.
Find us on the World Wide Web at www.westviewpress.com.
Westview Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the
United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more
information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books
Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800)
810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].
Drawings by Christina Rudloff
A Cataloging-in-Publication data record is available from the Library of Congress.
Hardcover ISBN: 0-8133-3936-7
Expanded paperback edition ISBN: 978-0-8133-4403-4
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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C
ONTENTS
Foreword to the First Edition ix
Preface to the Expanded Paperback Edition xv
1 JUST ANOTHER ITEM ON THE MENU 1
Fossil Evidence and Living Primates, 5
Predation and Primate Studies, 9
An Accurate Appraisal of Predation, 9
2 DEBUNKING “MAN THE HUNTER” 11
Will the First Hominid Please Stand Up? 13
A Messy Bush, 21
Wanderlust, 22
Man the Hunter? 23
Man the Dancer! 28
We Were Not “Cat Food”! 30
3 WHO’S EATING WHOM? 33
A Tale of Two Families, 34
The Prey Flee, the Predator Pursues, 38
Who Are These Primate Prey? 41
The Dichotomy about Death, 45
The James Carville Approach, 46
Predation Risk versus Predation Rate, 52
Who Was Eating Our Hominid Ancestors? 55
4 LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS, OH MY! 57
Choose Your Weapon, 63
v
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vi Contents
The Long and Winding Road from South Africa to Georgia, 70
Killing Machines, 76
Before the Age of Ulcers, 77
Perfect Primate Predators, 80
Give Us the Bear Facts, 84
5 COURSING HYENAS AND HUNGRY DOGS 89
Wolves at the Door, 90
No Laughing Matter, 95
Howls in the Prehistoric Night, 97
Leaders of the Pack, 104
6 MISSIONARY POSITION 111
The Serpentine Route, 112
Breathing Fire: The Komodo Dragon, 124
My, What Big Teeth You Have! 127
On Top of Everything Else, Sharks, Too? 133
7 TERROR FROM THE SKY 135
Featherweights and Talon Tips, 138
Crested Viragos, 141
An Alfred Hitchcock Moment, 147
The Record of Giant Raptors, 149
The Taung Child Tells Its Tale, 151
Running Hawks, Hungry Toucans, and Giant Owls, 155
8 WE WEREN’T JUST WAITING AROUND TO BE EATEN! 161
Heavyweight Champions, 166
Why Hermits Seem Odd, 170
We Saw ... Food. We Came ... Down from the Trees.
We Conquered ... Gravity, 174
On the Path to Einstein, 180
Daytime Talk Shows, 182
Making a Last Stand: Counterattack and Chutzpah, 186
Weapons of Mass Destruction, 189
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Contents vii
9 GENTLE SAVAGE OR BLOODTHIRSTY BRUTE? 191
The Hunting Myth and Sociobiology, 194
Chimpanzee and Human Males as Demonic Killers, 201
Chimpanzee Aggression, 207
Getting Out of Our Genes, 211
The Other 50%, 213
10 MAN THE HUNTED 219
Sink Your Teeth into This! 226
Painting the Family Portrait, 231
Habitat for Humanity, 235
Macaques R Us? 239
Put It All Together and What Do You Have? 242
Man the Hunted, 245
The Oldest Story, 248
11 THE LAST WORD 251
Carnivore Crimes: More about Bears, Big Cats, and Hyenas, 257
Python Pestilence and Eagle Escapades, 262
Man the Cannibal, 265
Cut Marks, Tooth Marks, and Question Marks, 268
Man the Sneaky Meat Thief, 271
Man the Peace-Loving Hippie? 275
Conventional Wisdom as Science, 283
Really Our Last Words, 284
Acknowledgments 287
Notes 289
Bibliography 311
Index 347
About the Authors 359
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F
OREWORD TO THE
F E
IRST DITION
Students of human evolution (like hapless skiers attacked by mountain
lions) have always held equivocal views about the place that Homo
sapiensand its predecessors have occupied in the food chain. And as a re-
sult they have tended to straddle or shuttle between extremes when at-
tempting to reconstruct the behaviors and lifestyles of our earliest
ancestors. Two diametrically opposed traditions in the artistic representa-
tion of early hominid lifeways run right back to the very beginnings of
paleoanthropology in the mid-nineteenth century. Some of the many
artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who specialized in
re-creating prehistoric scenes typically depicted small groups of puny and
vulnerable early humans huddled nervously around a campfire while big
cats circled, awaiting their opportunity to pounce. Others preferred to
represent the noble savage, proud and erect and usually armed with a
hunting spear or a stone axe (and sometimes with a dog at his heels),
striding out in search of quarry. The discovery in 1879 of the astonishing
animal images adorning the ceiling of the cave of Altamira, Spain, taken
early on to consist of straightforward if powerful and stylized representa-
tions of the prey animals of the Ice Age hunters who made them, gave a
huge impetus to interpretations of the latter kind. Still, the duality of
interpretation lingered well into the last century, possibly because both
ix
