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Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution, Expanded Edition | 
| Authors: Donna L. Hart, Robert W. Sussman
Publisher: Westview Press
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 507194
Media: Paperback
Edition: Expanded
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 0813344034
Dewey Decimal Number: 301
EAN: 9780813344034
ASIN: 0813344034
Publication Date: July 28, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Man the Hunted argues that primates, including the earliest members of the human family, have evolved as the prey of any number of predators, including wild cats and dogs, hyenas, snakes, crocodiles, and even birds. The authors’ studies of predators on monkeys and apes are supplemented here with the observations of naturalists in the field and revealing interpretations of the fossil record. Eyewitness accounts of the “man the hunted” drama being played out even now give vivid evidence of its prehistoric significance. This provocative view of human evolution suggests that countless adaptations that have allowed our species to survive—from larger brains to speech—stem from a considerably more vulnerable position on the food chain than we might like to imagine. The myth of early humans as fearless hunters dominating the earth obscures our origins as just one of many species that had to be cautious, depend on other group members, communicate danger, and come to terms with being merely one cog in the complex cycle of life. The expanded edition includes a new chapter that describes the ever-increasing evidence of predation on humans and other primates and claims that the earliest humans were neither hunters nor even the accomplished scavengers that many authorities have claimed. Contents Foreword by Ian Tattersall 1. Just Another Item on the Menu
2. Debunking “Man the Hunter”
3. Who’s Eating Whom?
4. Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!
5. Coursing Hyenas and Hungry Dogs
6. Missionary Position
7. Terror from the Sky
8. We Weren’t Just Waiting Around to be Eaten!
9. Gentle Savage or Bloodthirsty Brute?
10. Man the Hunted
11. The Final Word
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Test of a new hypothesis in anthropology: hunter or hunted or both--long term hominid evolution? August 28, 2008
Authors demonstrate that not only does the evolutionary homo sapiens enjoy a long history of hunting, but probably went through millions of years of being hunted. Mankind's instincts reflect both mechanisms for being the target of predators and being predators themselves.
Prey as the key to human evolution? July 13, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
The anthropological question of how humans evolved into a species that uses its brains rather than its brawn for survival remains an issue of contention in the academic community. Hart and Sussman have a unique take on the evolutionary mechanism that caused this: rather than "man the hunter" (using his brain to plan and organize hunts and create tools to subdue game), they propose "man as prey" caused us to evolve as we have. Their argument has merit.
About half of the book discusses animals that can or have preyed on humans and early hominids - everything from eagles, crocodiles and hyeneas, to lions, tigers and bears (oh my!). Anyone who has spent any time in the wild is quickly reminded just how vulnerable we are to predators, as Hart and Sussman point out not only through contemporary accounts, but also through the fossil record. Establishing that we are food, they next go on to hypothesize how this may have influenced our early ancestors to adopt. Essentially they believe that we adopted a wide variety of coping mechanisms from vocalization and socialization to versitile locomotion and most importantly, "outsmarting" predators, causing them to find easier meals.
The authors readily admit that sociological evidence is impossible to gather on early hominids, but hypothesize and extrpolate based on behaviours of similar primates. This is also used as evidence to refute the "man as hunter" hypothesis. (Baboons, chimpanzees, and bonobos for example, are only opportunistic hunters rather than strict predators). The strongest evidence, I thought, was their discussion of fossil dentition (and the inference that early hominids ate seeds, tubers and vegitation rather than a steady diet of meat.) I found most interesting their disucssion of how the "man the hunter" hypothesis was originated.
The idea of "man the mighty hunter", they contend, lies with a patrilineal view of primates (which was incorrect, as it turns out, in understanding Baboon social heirarchy, and by extension of our own evolution), a Puritanical view of nature (as something that must be tamed or conquored) and a Hobbesan-understanding of primate interaction (life as "nasty, brutish and short", therefore condemning man to constant warfare and strife.) On the contrary, Hart and Sussman point out social cooperation is the norm among primates, not warfare or competition; they also emphasize the role of the female in our evolution, rather than males. (WIth chimpanzees, for example, females are the recipticles of knowledge and tool making. Females are the leaders of baboon troops, not males.)
Certainly their ideas are not without its detractors, as evidenced by Hart and Sussman's discussion of the academic controversy. For the lay reader, their thesis is accessable and truly fascinating - and, I for one, see the merits of their position. Highly recommended.
Yum, said the Cave Bear, Hominid! My Favorite Dish! May 20, 2008
22 out of 30 found this review helpful
A debate has raged, politely you may be sure, among archaeologists concerning whether Homo habilis, Homo ergaster, and other pre-modern humans were ferocious hunters or skulking scavengers. That debate is not even near resolution, and may well be conducted on false questions, but authors hunt and Sussman want us to consider human evolution from another angle, that of primates in general and hominids in particular as more preyed upon than preying. Their evidence derives from two sources: observation of depradation on primate species in the world today, and forensic examination of bite and claw wounds in hominid/homonoid fossils. Some reviewers seem to have read an ethical issue into the book, addressing aggression in human nature. Frankly, if such issues were raised, I hardly noticed them. My attention was riveted to the question of the central importance of predation in evolution, not only of Homo sapiens but of all multicellular life.
The most successful predators on primates in the world today - leopards, eagles, and crocodilians - would seem to have been likely predators on australopithecines as well. Then there's some archaeological evidence that hyenas were on gastronomic terms with "Cro-Magnon" folk in China. But did fear of predators and the skills needed to avoid them play a significant role in human evolution. The authors think so, and their case, if not proven, is at least entertaining to the jury.
I'm prompted - unrepentant carnivore that I am - to ask a broader question of evolutionary theory. Has predation been a significant accelerator of evolution, a driver if you will, since the pre-Cambrian?
It's generally supposed that the development of our "large-but-not-quite-large-enough" brains was fueled by the calories of hunted or scavenged flesh. Long before "us", however, was predation the driver of intelligence. Could we Wise Homos ever have existed without someone being eaten?
 A New Perspective July 19, 2006
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
As with any new or unique perspective on the evolution of humanity, "Man the Hunted" has drawn both praise and damnation. Being informed that your ancestors were little more than snacks for large carnivores may bring some human-centric reviewers down a peg or two and also induce some nasty penmanship.
I like my natural history gritty. How about pp 140 " the crowned hawk-eagle not only has the power and the momentum, the surprise and the speed, but those great talons are used with such exactitude that the heart of the prey is the target ... In one juvenile monkey the heart was triple-pierced from a single deathblow; the talon went in one side of the heart, came out the other side, and- achievable only because of the camber of the eagle's talon- curved back and reentered the heart once again."
This is an engaging and highly readable book, and its premise stands the test. Let's face it, the famous "Taung baby" discovered in 1924 by Raymond Dart was recently proven to have been the prey of a large eagle; there are the typical "can opener" marks of eagle talons on Taung's skull. The only disagreement I would have with the authors is the extent of meat eating and its time interval in our history. Hart and Sussman maintain that "top predator" status was only recently attained by humans; whereas in my opinion brain expansion = meat. The human fossil record is one of exponential brain expansion, and something must have driven that expansion; meat and society.
The authors themselves are extremely fair in their treatment of others who have been critical of their work, and also point out where their own views diverge on aspects of human evolution. There is no apparent political agenda being pushed and the quotes from Robert Ardrey and E. Tylor are placed in a fair and relevant context. There are dozens of attributions and a full bibliography, in response to another review.
 Gross incompetence and dishonesty March 5, 2006
18 out of 55 found this review helpful
I see from the reviews here that this book has managed to convince people so far. I hope that if I point out their methods here others will be able to see it for what it really is, a political viewpoint that they have dressed up with flim flam and lies.
In my opinion Sussman and Hart are knowingly dishonest and just make stuff up. There is a chance that they are also amazingly incompetent and lacking in any basic knowledge of the topic, but it can be hard to distinguish this from their transparent attempts to cleverly distort reality and the positions of others. At the very least, their motive to even write this book is based on their failure to understand some very basic things about evolution and genetics, and how nature via nurture results in behavior.
Given that Sussman claims to be a primatologist and that he claims to be working on preservation of endangered species in various parts of the world, we might, for example, expect something a bit beyond the following on the topic of the coevolution of predators and prey, "In other words, if prey evolve a new way to elude predators, predators evolve in the direction of overcoming the new strategy. Any major destabilization in the balance of predators and prey comes
about because the prey have evolved some new way to elude predation; the predator then has to counteradapt or give up eating the newly elusive prey (Tylor, E. Primitive Culture, 1871)." (pg. 40)
No, I did not mistype that, they use a book from 1871! By a man that specialized in the topic of primitive religions and who held profoundly racist views that Africans were in the middle between apes and white men. How can this be the best possible source on the topic of the coevolution of predator and prey? Either they are amazingly ignorant, or they set out to find a source that did not contradict their carefully constructed and entirely wrong notions. They count on the reader never looking up what that little number "18" references. Do any of you think that this racist expert in religions that wrote back in 1871 is likely the last word on the coevolution of prey and predators? So ask yourself then, why would they use him? Because their argument fails if they try to use any modern experts in the topic. Using this source is essentially a lie then.
Throughout they make use of devious methods of argumentation as they seeks to pull whatever comes to hand over the reader's eyes. In discussing hunting they admit that hunting is "common" (pg. 23) behavior in primates. This is a huge problem for someone arguing that human behavior and evolution is unrelated to hunting. But then they launch the effort to whitewash this, skipping right along and changing the subject in a way they hope you do not notice.
Fond of using the work of non-scientists from decades ago as whipping posts, here they choose Robert Ardrey, who with typical journalistic license went overboard on his assertions back thirty some years ago. Even still they twist vigorously at what Ardrey wrote. Where Ardrey says that our ancestors were "continuosly dependant on killing to survive" Sussman claims to refute by arguing against a view that "hunting could have been the main food procurement venture for early hominids." This is not what Ardrey asserted at all. Obviously, a food source need not be the main one for it to be critical for survival. Even five or ten percent of a diet can easily make the difference between health and death over a long period of time. Given seasonal changes in plant derived food sources it is also probable that hunting would be a more critical source periodically than it was on average.
It is a basic assumption of biology and evolutionary theory that animals engage in behaviors which increase their fitness, that these behaviors exist because they increased the numbers of descendants of the individuals that had them relative to those that did not and were therefore passed on, they were selected for. Therefore we work with the assumption that if a behavior is common to a whole order, the primates, as they admit hunting is, then it must be important to survival and fitness. Which should just end the debate unless they have some spectacular evidence somehow that hunting is just a random behavior that happens to be universal in primates and every single human culture. Which would make it the only known example and a huge problem for the theory of evolution to explain. They do not offer any such evidence, instead they boldly assert that they have conclusive proof against the theory of "Man the Hunter," which is that our ancestors two million years ago had teeth that were not the teeth of a carnivore. Of course, no one ever said they were. Not Ardrey or anyone else. But they are clearly that of an omnivore, which includes hunting, and which they neglect to mention. This also has to be seen as simply a lie. An effort to convince you of what is not true and to disguise what is true from your view, and to use the reader's lack of knowledge of the topic to do so.
In fact I doubt the word omnivore is in this book anywhere, they live in a world where species either peacefully chew grass until they are eaten, or they eat only meat all the time.
They also seem to avoid the obvious fact that even herbivores can compete over territory and mating with other herbivores in violent conflicts; perhaps they would see two rams butting heads as peacefull? Yet they are undeniably prey animals and do not hunt. So even if we gave them their founding assertions, what they assert follows from them obviously does not.
It is remarkable too that Sussman has such a unique opinion of what others believe. Perhaps this is not surprising given how behind the times his sources are, but still one is puzzled to read, for example, that "Conventional wisdom would picture predators formulaically thinning the size of their prey populations-mountain lions eating just the right number of deer to keep the deer, in turn, from overpopulating." (pg. 39) Perhaps this was the conventional wisdom back in 1871, but as I am not an expert in the history of science I have no idea.
Any vague knowledge of evolution would tell one that each predator looks out for themselves, there is no consideration of the health of the group they prey on. Ideas similar to this one, that individuals in groups would limit the number of their offspring to the ideal number the environment could support, were conclusively dismissed over forty years ago. That hardly makes them or their cousins, as these look to be,"conventional wisdom." Again, this can only be extreme ignorance of the topic or intentional dishonesty.
This was a funny one though, "Should we then not worry that too many chimpanzees might be obliterated by their natural predators? Absolutely not. Any substantive and long-term drop in numbers of prey will arise from a lack of resources." Huh. So all those flightless birds just happened to lack resources at the same time that cats and rats were introduced to their island homes? I suppose that one can argue these were not their natural predators, but species have invaded new habitats millions of times naturally. One gets a picture from this book of a world where species are in some magical stasis, one
would be very shocked to learn that 99% of all species that have
ever existed are now extinct.
Of course the larger assertions are just hilarious, and their books are cooked until they are pure carbon. The idea is that if we can show that our ancestors several million years ago did not hunt, and that instead they were hunted, then somehow magically it follows that human nature is basically good and peacefull and all evil is caused by evil cultures. Which is a
hilarious leap out into mid air, logically. And it means that they fully subscribe to genetic determinism for this purpose. But then they also want to say that even if we did hunt that would not mean we were by nature killers, since that would be genetic determinism; the same thing that they like so much when they make their first argument but which they are adamantly opposed to if it might result in what their politics disagree with.
In fact on page 211 they blatantly admit that their whole book is pointless ["And furthermore, research seems to indicate that the neurophysiology of aggression between species is quite different from the spontaneous violence linked to intraspecific aggression by humans (that is, murder)."], and then they just keep on going anyway. If there is no link in the human mind between murder and hunting, which of course there is not and the whole argument is just absurdly silly from the start, then how does their assertion that we were not hunters two million years ago have any particular import? The lack of citation here is also a fairly common feature of the book, and one that is highly suspect. Who did the research and how can I find it? Is it from 1871?
And of course the whole idea that a species can be characterized by looking at how it's distant ancestors lived is absurd if one does not also look at how it lives now. Sussman and Hart avoid the knowledge that all human societies ever encountered hunt. How does an anthropologist who is a former editor of a major journal avoid this knowledge? It must be simple dishonesty.
We might just as well have a book titled "Whales, the Land
Dwellers." Sure, their distant ancestors lived on land, but
obviously no whales do now. What they ate or were eaten by seems to be a question that few would care the answer to, and I see no reason for more to care what our very distant ancestors ate or were eaten by.
Sure, evolutionary psychology recognizes that there can be behaviors left over from our ancestors. Perhaps we could speculate, for example, that our fondness for petting animals is left over from our ancient bonding by grooming behavior. But given that it is very very likely our ancestors hunted, since they had the teeth for it, it is common (as the authors admit) in primates, and all human societies ever found hunt then I think we need to just admit that we are evolved as hunters. Then we can also get past all these bizarre negative ideas about it too. It does not mean we are violent or aggressive or demonic or emotionless killers. It means we were hungry.
Let me also mention that evolutionary psychology is well aware that humans have adaptations to avoid predators. That extreme fear of snakes is common in humans is frequently given as an example of evolved behaviors, behaviors that have no environmental cues and therefore can be seen as "hardwired." Infants and captive chimps that never had seen snakes before have exhibited this fear, so it does seem that our brains are born with this information and response. But I fail to see how being eaten by a predator changes the character of a person from violent to peaceful. Hitler was a vegetarian, if he had also been eaten by a bear would that indicate that he was by nature peaceful? That his descendants were peaceful? The logic of their argument simply does not exist.
Ian Tattersall contributes a forward in which he heaps scorn on
evolution (and he teaches courses with evolution in the title),
biology, genetics, the lot, and seems to hint that they should be replaced by some vague notions of "emergent events" and also
the "history" of the species. He states, "Clearly the unprecedented qualities of our species are the result of an emergent event, and there is indeed something truly different about the way we Homo Sapiens behave that seems to distinguish us from even our closest ancestors. And as a result, it is evident that we cannot attribute the ways in which we behave directly to our genes or even, more indirectly, to our history, as a bee or an angel fish might much more plausibly do."
I fail to see how anything in the second sentence follows as a
result of anything in the first, but these people specialize in
grand leaps into the void. I also fail to understand the difference between a species history and it's genetic history, he seems to suggest by this some new means of transmitting inherited traits that is less "direct" than genetic.
There are people who connect various of the following; hunting and murder, murder and war, and hunting and war. Some of these people exist in the area of evolutionary psychology (for example, David Buss) a field the authors oppose. But all of these connections are wrong, and the authors know that, as they say on page 211. The ideas are simply illogical and poorly thought through. It would be possible for a group to hunt and not make war, or make war and not hunt. The fact is that all human groups do make war except for extremely isolated or nomadic ones. The fact is that all human groups hunt. Lacking very strong counter evidence we must start with the assumption that these behaviors have genetic components which contribute to their universality. This does not mean that we cannot choose other behaviors. I am a longtime vegetarian myself. But it does mean that we need to know who we are before we can truly control these choices. We need to stand up and admit that we were born with a predisposition to make war, and then understand what the psychology of that is in our minds so that we can avoid falling into the evolved paterns. Denial will not lead to peace for humans any more than it leads to sobriety for drunks. If you want to see where that path leads, you can start here - http://theroadtopeace.blogspot.com/
I believe it is time to engage in some identity correction. These people are effectively secular creationists. Anti-science and evolution, using many of the same tactics including outright lies, all in support of their decidedly dogmatic beliefs. They are the secular creationists. Denial of the theory of evolution or of human nature will not lead to peace. In fact an unshakeable belief in one's own peacefullnes is a part of what lets us be lead to war so readily, we always think that we are truly acting in self defense. Even the Germans in WWII thought that. It is not determinism to say that we have genes that predispose us to certain behaviors, it is the first step to being able to change those behaviors.
The authors believe that their position must be true because they believe if it is then humans are basically good and peaceful, and they feel themselves to be these. Therefore they try to make this case despite all the evidence and the need to lie to the reader and to themselves. They feel that admitting that humans evolved adaptations for hunting and war would mean that there was no hope. On the contrary. Admitting these truths is our only hope for peace.
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